


Night to Night

by loveheartlover



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Disordered Eating, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Minor Drug Use, Nipple Piercings, Rock Star Blaine, Slow Build, dancer kurt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-14 09:08:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4558875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveheartlover/pseuds/loveheartlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine is a rock star who hates to sleep alone. Luckily, his choreographer slash favorite dancer Kurt Hummel is more than happy to play teddy bear when they go on tour.<br/>--------------<br/>When Kurt had gone to college, he’d imagined the curtains going up hundreds of times. He just hadn’t imagined himself in a cornflower blue corset and eyeliner when they did, or that he’d be dancing for a rock star instead of singing As Long As You’re Mine. This, bright lights in place of sweeping cloth, the loud screaming and music roaring in his ears as he shook the glitter out of his hair and pressed his hips against Jake’s, was <i>so</i> much better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Kurt wakes up to cold fingers sneaking under his shirt, encircling his waist. “If you’re a serial killer, fuck off,” he says, yawning into his pillow and half-heartedly swatting at the arm around him.

“Sweetheart, if I were a murderer I wouldn’t be trying to warm myself. I’d be killing you,” comes the gruff reply. “Now roll over and spoon me already.”

“Blaine?” Kurt rolls, decidedly more awake than he was a few moments ago. Blaine rolls too, so Kurt can’t see his face, but in the dim light leaking through the curtains he can make out dark curls and the line of Blaine’s neck that vanishes beneath the sheets. When Kurt doesn’t immediately spoon up behind him, Blaine shivers. It’s obviously put on, but it works all the same, and Kurt hooks his arms around Blaine to pull him back against him. They tangle their legs together, and Kurt leaves one arm low on Blaine’s stomach, the other stretched up on the pillow above him. Blaine’s hair tickles at Kurt’s nose.

“You want to talk about it?” Kurt asks.

Blaine stays silent.

He’s not asleep, although he’s trying very hard to convince Kurt otherwise, exaggerating his breaths in and out. Kurt doesn’t push, and eventually Blaine’s breathing evens out for real. Kurt closes his eyes, trying to think of how to ask Blaine about this in the morning—because Blaine’s a sucker for touch, when they’re on the bus he’s constantly hugging and wrestling and flinging his arms around the band, the driver, everyone—but he’s never taken it this far before.

When Kurt opens his eyes, it’s morning. Blaine is gone, crumpled sheets and a dented pillow the only sure signs he wasn’t a figment of Kurt’s imagination last night.

Blaine acts like nothing happened. They all cram into Brittany’s room, because she’s an absolute angel and ran to the bakery down the road and bought them all pastries for breakfast. She beams when Kurt walks into the room, like she hadn’t texted him thirty seconds earlier demanding his presence, and as soon as he sits down beside Mike she straddles his lap. “Kitten Cat,” she says, “we need opinions.”

“Pastry first, then opinions.”

“You tell ‘em,” Jake grins, looking up from where he’s sat at Mike’s feet. His phone is unlocked in his lap, a photo of a smiling girl Kurt vaguely recalls seeing hanging off his arm from time to time set as his wallpaper.

“You’re back with…” Kurt pauses, racking his brain for the girl’s name.

“Marley,” Blaine murmurs in Kurt’s ear as he walks past to join Sam, Quinn, and Tina. A bag containing a pain au chocolat is pressed into Kurt’s hand.

“Marley,” Kurt repeats, staring after Blaine.

Jake takes no notice and nods, flicking through the photos on his phone to find the shot that shows her off the best before passing it to Kurt. She’s pretty, all big brown eyes and long pale legs, blowing a kiss at the camera while the wind blows her sundress up around the tops of her thighs. “Got back together a few nights ago, she came to the show in Seattle on Thursday.”

“Oh yeah? I’m happy for you.” He is, has always worried that Jake might feel a little out of place with the rest of the group. Jake’s the youngest on tour, seven years between him and the next youngest, Tina, but he’s a good dancer. When Blaine had been recruiting, picking out the best for his tour, he’d gone through people he’d worked with in the past first. His best friend from high school, Sam, became the guitarist; two girls he’d known from college, Quinn and Tina, were on bass and keyboards respectively; Puck, a guy he’d found banging away on saucepans at a party one night and had stuck with him ever since, played drums. Kurt had been choreographing and dancing for Blaine since his first music video two years earlier, there’d been no question as to whether Kurt would be going on tour or not.

The rest of the dancers had been Kurt’s to pick. He’d gone for talent and mellowness, needing people who could handle being stuck on a tour bus for long periods of time with a group of people known for their melodramatics. Brittany was an easy choice, Kurt wanted at least one girl and she had been dancing with him since they were kids. Mike was another given, he’d been dancing in Blaine’s videos for almost as long as Kurt had been choreographing them. Initially Kurt had wanted another girl, but the ones he’d worked with before were unavailable and the ones who auditioned hadn’t clicked well with the dynamic of the group. It was Puck who’d saved the day. A few weeks before the tour was due to start, he’d dragged his little brother along to a rehearsal. While Blaine was hashing out lyrics with Sam, Mike had gotten talking to Jake, and upon learning he was a dance major had convinced Kurt to teach him the routine to _Linger_ and try him out. Jake’s bunk on the tour bus had been a sure thing after that.

“You wouldn’t say that if you were sharing a room with him,” Mike says. “It’s all Marley this and Marley that, and _oh Mike, Marley said the funniest thing yesterday_.”

“I am not that bad!”

“Oh yes you are.” Jake hides his face in his hands and whines, looking so pathetic that Kurt takes pity.

“What do you want opinions on?”

“When we do the European leg of the tour, we want to do a different piece while Blaine’s doing his second costume change. Stop it getting boring,” Mike explains.

Kurt nods. Blaine has two costume changes per show. The first is easy, a shirt switch and a big fancy coat that Blaine can easily pull on in the wings while the intro for _Highlight_ plays. The second change takes too long for Blaine to pull it off while a song that doesn’t immediately require his vocals starts, so when they were arranging the set list, they’d accounted for that. Between _A Real Live Blood Bath_ and _Night to Night_ , Tina goes off stage with Blaine to fix his make-up and help him with the fiddlier aspects of his final costume. The others play an instrumental piece, and the dancers get to perform. It’s been the same dance since tour started, all big sweeping movements and complicated footwork. A change would be nice.

“So what have you been thinking?” Kurt asks.

“Something sexy,” Brittany says. “Something that starts slow and gets fast.”

Kurt rolls his eyes. The entire show is sexy, that’s Blaine’s selling point. Half the choreography is just a lot of hip rolls and touching and grinding and making bedroom eyes at the invisible crowd.

“Not sexy, so much as sensual,” Mike says, catching Kurt’s expression. “When we dance with Blaine, the audience get everything. The whole point is to be as in your face as possible, so we all but fuck on stage and they love every second of it. What Britt means is a tease, something to get them riled up, ready for _Night to Night._ ”

And okay, that actually makes sense. _Night to Night_ is fast from the beginning, no time for a tease in the actual song itself. Putting something slower right before it, using the dance solo to build the audience up? That could really work.

“I’ll talk to the band, see if they can come up with something new we can dance to. I’m sure that song actually had a slow start originally. I remember Blaine playing it on the piano for me the night after he and Sam wrote it, while we were making the video for _Hot Shot_. The cut must have come when they started recording it for the album.”

Brittany gives a little squeal and rolls off Kurt’s lap, smacking a kiss to his cheek before she skips over to sit –well, lie on, really, but Quinn doesn’t seem to mind– with the others.

“Show starts at nine, sound check at six, so we have eight hours to kill,” Sam announces. He waits until they’re all cheering before adding, “back on the bus tonight.” He gets a round of raspberries for his trouble.

It’s not that the bus is _bad_ per se. In fact, it’s quite a pleasant place to be. Blaine technically has his own bus, but most of the time he stays with the rest of them, so they all watch DVDs and bicker over who has to get up and get beer for everyone and occasionally fit a Mario Kart tournament in before it’s time to retreat to the bunks.

The bunks are what make the bus raspberry worthy. Fastened to the walls, they’re like rows of tiny prison beds, but worse. The high bunk is too high, and sitting up no matter how fast or slow results in a sore head. To safely disembark, the high bunkers have to just roll themselves off their beds while cocooned in thick blankets, sad burrito butts hitting the floor and praying for no bruises. The low bunkers don’t have a much better deal. If they sit up they hit the top bunks, but they’re close enough to the ground to roll without fear of losing any filling. However, they have the risk of a high bunker falling on top of them when they’re walking back from the bathroom and trying to get into their own bed.

There’s a reason the dancers, graceful and with a higher awareness of where their various limbs are at all times, as well as better co-ordination all round when it came to not falling onto people, got put in the high bunks.

On the nights Blaine doesn’t switch buses at rest stops, he sleeps on the sofa. If he does switch, he has an _actual bed_ on his bus, and the rest of them are beyond jealous. If Kurt had a real bed to go back to, he wouldn’t put up with the lumpy sofa, yet nine times out of ten, if Blaine started the evening there, he would stay on their bus.

Blaine’s bus was the chill out bus, so to speak. The band bus was loud, between the DVDs or the music or the actual parties that the band loved to throw every now and again just for themselves. For a bit of peace and quiet, Kurt often retreated to the other bus. He liked parties, but up until college Kurt had hated to be so much as touched by another human being. He’d snapped out of it pretty fast, dance classes required a lot of touching, and since the tour started there was precious little time that he wasn’t being hugged or picked up or picking other people up. He still needed time away from the loud, endless jabber though, and Blaine made for good company on those days. He’d put on something quiet and let Kurt vent, or call home, or they’d just sit in silence and let the noise from the other bus do the talking for them.

Despite having eight hours to kill, and Blaine swearing he had nothing to do all day, Kurt doesn’t see him again until sound check, doesn’t get a chance to talk to him until they’re about to walk on stage. Blaine comes up behind him and hooks his chin over Kurt’s bare shoulder, having to go up on tip toe to do so. “Hey Kitten Cat,” he says.

“Don’t you start too,” Kurt groans. “It’s bad enough having Britt call me that.”

“Oh come on, everyone gets nicknames,” Blaine says. “It’s part of the bonding experience of being on tour!”

“I see everyone naked on a daily basis, have had everyone but you and Quinn stick their tongues down my throat, and I did a shot off Mike’s ass the other day. Believe me, I’m bonded.”

Blaine laughs, the deep belly laugh that makes his whole face scrunch up as he rocks on his feet. “Well when you put it like that, I guess I can see how cutesy nicknames don’t really fit into the whole rock star life we’ve got going on. Embrace it anyway, KitCat, we’ve got a long way to go yet.”

He’s walking onto the pitch black stage before Kurt can reply, taking his place beside Tina.

Brittany adjusts the laces of Kurt’s corset one last time, and then pats his hip. Time to be professional. He files onto stage behind Jake and kneels at Quinn’s feet.

Let the show begin.

* * *

 

When Kurt had gone to college, he’d imagined the curtains going up hundreds of times. He just hadn’t imagined himself in a cornflower blue corset and eyeliner when they did, or that he’d be dancing for a rock star instead of singing _As Long As You’re Mine_. This, bright lights in place of sweeping cloth, the loud screaming and music roaring in his ears as he shook the glitter out of his hair and pressed his hips against Jake’s, was so much better.

It’s early in the first half, during _Frostbitten,_ that Blaine changes things.

The dancers aren’t really needed, the song is one of Blaine’s slowest and there’s no real choreography to speak of. They can mess around with the band or go off-stage and get a drink, depending on how they’re feeling. Kurt’s near Sam, playing the flirt, dancing close and pretending to try and steal his guitar, while Blaine stands front and centre and sings. There’s a sudden roar from the crowd, and while the lights mean Kurt can’t see them, he can see what’s got them so worked up. Blaine is crooking his finger in Kurt’s direction, _“Baby let me melt the ice, warm you to your very core,”_ being sung his way.

Kurt rolls his eyes. Ice Prince, that’s what the fans like to call him on Twitter, because he doesn’t do the press thing, doesn’t like to play up to the camera. He gets dragged to a lot of interviews with Blaine, but he does his best to keep all the questions going Blaine’s way, has grown out of needing to prove he’s worth something. Besides, his smiling silence gets him far more attention than anything he could ever have to say.

He sidles up to Blaine, a question in his eyes that Blaine answers with a wink, before turning to press his back to Kurt’s chest. Blaine keeps singing, lets Kurt do the work. Kurt guides him into a few slow hip rolls, keeps him pressed close as he ponders what to make of this new dynamic. Normally, Kurt makes sure Blaine is dancing with Brittany if the choreography calls for something like this.

Everyone knows Blaine is gay. His tour is the epitome of flamboyance, all glitter and make-up and tight pants, but there’s still a line. In the music videos Kurt is happy to cross it. He and Blaine had spent hours working out how many innuendos and naked men were _too many,_ and then doubled that number just for the hell of it. On stage though, Kurt hadn’t been sure how far to push it, so he played it safe. Blaine got to grind with Brittany, sometimes Mike or Jake, but Kurt had pulled back, worrying about the fan reaction. People already “shipped” him and Blaine, just because they were both very openly gay and on the same tour. He didn’t need to add fuel to the fire by throwing in videos of them dancing like… well, this.

Line well and truly crossed now— in fact, it was rude to even refer to it as a line any more, the curve of Kurt’s cock rocking against Blaine’s ass utterly defiling that which was once the line— Kurt gave in. As Blaine all but purred, “ _twist it, pound it, don’t forget about it”,_ Kurt sucked two of the fingers on the hand that Blaine wasn’t using to hold the microphone into his mouth.

The fans positively howled as Blaine’s eyes widened. He snapped his head around to stare at Kurt, and then he smirked. Ever the professional, he played up Kurt’s reaction, fanning himself and laughing around the final lines of the song. As the notes faded out Kurt let go of his fingers, and with a saucy wink and a wriggle, he skipped back over to Mike.

Blaine gets his revenge after _Linger_ , when he does his special introductions for everyone. The band members get to play a little solo, and Blaine’s his usual affectionate self, hyping them up to the audience before he moves on to the dancers. Normally he starts with Kurt, but this time he goes straight from Puck to Jake, then Mike, Brittany, and when it’s Kurt’s turn his smile turns wicked as he faces the audience.

“And this,” he announces, wrapping an arm around Kurt’s shoulders and pulling him forward, “this here is Kurt, our very own Kitten Cat. He’s my choreographer, my favorite dancer,” he pauses to put a hand beside his mouth, stage whispers, “but don’t tell the others!” Mike and Jake and Brittany crack up in the background, pretending to sob or get mad, while Kurt feels his cheeks flush hot and really really hopes the heat from the stage lights will be able to explain them away. Blaine normally just introduces him as Kurt, choreographer extraordinaire, and then lets Kurt go to dance a tiny solo. This time he keeps holding on. “And,” Blaine says over the shouts from the crowd, who know perfectly well that this is _not_ how the other performances have gone so far, “I think he needs to know that he’s looking particularly pretty in this corset tonight.” Before anyone can react, before Blaine’s words have had chance to sink in and take effect, Blaine kisses Kurt.

It isn’t a good kiss. It’s all teeth and tongue, no finesse, Kurt too taken by surprise to do more than stare blankly at Blaine as he’s released. Blaine nudges him forward, and Kurt snaps back into action, does a quick pirouette that ends in a bow before backing off towards the others. With his back to the audience he’s safe to mouth “what the ever living fuck” to Sam, who’s the one Blaine would have told his plan to, whatever his plan actually is. Sam shakes his head, and Kurt takes comfort in the fact that he looks just as shocked as Kurt does.

When the show is finally over, and they’re all stumbling their way backstage towards the dressing room, Blaine catches hold of Kurt’s arm and pulls him away from the others, presses him up against a wall. “What did you think of my little surprise?” Blaine asks.

Kurt should snap at him, ask him what he was playing at, tell him how stupid a move it was. The words won’t come, so he shrugs.

Thanks for the help, brain.

“If I wanted it to be part of your intro from now on, would that be okay?” Blaine presses, watching him closely. Kurt looks up, and catches the slight worry in Blaine’s eyes. It’s obvious he knows he should have talked to Kurt about it first. Kurt should say no. Too many fans, the press won’t let it go, his Dad is going to have _another_ heart attack if he finds out Kurt is making out with Blaine Anderson on stage every night—

“You couldn’t have come up with something better than Kitten Cat?” He says instead.

Blaine laughs, relief flooding his features. It’s good, he looks good like this, hair wild from where he’s been running his hands through it, eyeliner smudged, whole body vibrating with pleasure now that the show is over, went well. “I was under pressure. You started it anyway, reminding me I hadn’t made out with you right before we went on stage, and then being such a tease during _Frostbitten_. That’s becoming part of it too now, you know. The fans won’t forgive us if we only do it the once.”

Kurt sighs, but it’s not a mean sigh by any stretch of the imagination, and Blaine knows it. “I suppose,” Kurt says, “if it’s for the _fans_. Just make sure you wash your fingers before going on stage, I don’t want gross eye shadow gunk in my mouth.”

“Oi, make out patrol!” Quinn yells. “Get your butts into gear, we have a lot of ground to cover and not enough time to get there. Straight onto the buses.”

Blaine lets Kurt pull away, but as Kurt nears the dressing room, he calls after him. “KitCat!”

“ _What?_ ” Kurt asks, exasperated.

“On my bus tonight?”

Kurt pauses. Of all the things that have happened tonight, _that’s_ the one that makes alarm bells start ringing. The performance line that is no longer called a line was something he could cross. It wasn’t a particularly smart thing to do, but the worst that will happen is an explosion on the internet. There is a much bigger, bolder line staring him in the face right now, and it’s one Kurt knows he really can’t cross. Blaine is his boss. His friend, yes, even his best friend, but before that, he is Kurt’s boss. And there is a very strict _only platonic relationships on tour_ rule. Unspoken but louder for it.

“Sure.”

Seriously, Kurt and his brain are going to have a serious conversation later, about re-evaluating that very important connection between thoughts and Kurt’s words. It’s getting out of hand.

He needs a conscience. He needs a nice fairy with a wand to come and give him a cricket for a conscience —without the spooky donkey island, or the whale, or the need to be a real boy, thank you very much— because his own was clearly left in New York City.

* * *

 

There’s no such thing as straight onto the buses after a show. If it’s a hotel night, they go clubbing, often straight from the venue. If it’s a bus night, they have to fight their way through crowds of fans to get onto a bus in the first place.

It’s a good thing Blaine’s a people person. With the help of a decent team of security, he manages to sign autographs and pose for photos and thank people for coming for _hours_. If he’s too tired he’ll walk quickly, doesn’t stop for individual photos but will smile in the general direction of the cameras so they can at least get photos of him, still thanks everyone for coming.

Kurt is not a people person. The others are all like Blaine, able to stand for the photos and smile and make small talk with the fans who seek them out, because the fans have their favorites. Blaine, of course, is the main event, but the band aren’t a consolation prize either. Fans know their names, know about their pet cat or how they got started in life, will eagerly ask for advice about breaking into the business or how to get their hair to bounce as much as Mike’s does. Everyone knows Kurt, because he’s been with Blaine and in the spotlight for so long. They know him even more so after tonight.

“Kurt,” they shout, beg, plead, reaching out, cameras flashing bright in his face as they call for his attention. Kurt can’t smile for them. Sometimes he can pretend, gives as good as he gets, keeps the energy from on stage, that persona— which is now going to be christened Kitten Cat courtesy of Blaine, no doubt— going until he’s on the bus. Tonight he’s thinking too hard about why Blaine wants him on his bus to pull it off. Some of the fans realize it, he can tell. They nod at him sympathetically, don’t scream in his ear, a few of them even start telling the more over the top to cool it. For those fans, Kurt can spare a smile, a grateful little twitch of his mouth that they return.

The rest of the band have clued in now, realized tonight is not a good night for him. Quinn suddenly appears on one side of Kurt, Mike the other, and they angle themselves so the worst of the flashes from the camera can’t reach him. “You okay?” Quinn asks out of the corner of her mouth.

“Yeah,” Kurt says, because with them there he can breathe. It takes another fifteen minutes for them to get on the bus, Blaine still outside with security. Quinn brushes the locks of Kurt’s hair that are falling out of place off his forehead, Brittany gets him a bottle of beer, and Kurt’s back to himself.

He’d expected them to drive away, thought Blaine would get onto the other bus and Kurt would just have to apologize when they got to the next venue. He doesn’t even know where they’re going any more, just knows there’s another three weeks before they have a four day weekend to recover before this whole crazy thing starts again. Sam notices his confusion around the same time everyone is starting on their third beer, and explains. “Blaine’s bus has gone already, he’s getting onto this one. We’re going to stop a few miles out of the city so Blaine can switch if he wants. We’re stopping even if he doesn’t want to, there’s no more beer in here but I know there’s some on his bus.”

“I definitely saw a big bottle of vodka when I was on there last,” Kurt confides, and Sam cheers.

“We’ll get that over here and all then! Party all the way to—“

He’s cut off by Blaine climbing onto the bus. Blaine stays in the doorway for a minute, thanking the security no doubt, and then he’s falling into Sam’s lap and nuzzling into his shoulder. Sam laughs and pets at his curls. “Kitten Cat says you’ve been keeping vodka from us, Bumble.”

“Bumble? As in, Bumblebee, right?” Kurt perks up considerably. He doesn’t talk on stage, sure, but he can definitely work that into an interview somewhere.

“How drunk _were_ you after the Phoenix show?” Tina snickers. “You don’t remember us having this conversation?”

“No,” Kurt says slowly. “So do we all have embarrassing nicknames, or is it just me and Bumble?”

Blaine flips Kurt off without removing his head from Sam’s neck, stealing Sam’s beer and taking a swig from an angle that should have been impossible. Apparently even the laws of physics take a step back when it comes to Blaine Anderson.

“Just you and Blaine,” Tina says. “Your names were the easiest to do it with, and after we figured you two out we decided we’d rather play with the stripper pole.”

Kurt has a sudden flashback to the world being upside down as he hung off a stripper pole in his underwear, and a pair of boots he suspects may have belonged to the… well, the stripper actually.

“You got really into it,” Jake supplies helpfully. “The manager offered you a job. Blaine cried.”

“I did not!” Blaine says, and then, “fuck, I did, oh my god. I didn’t want you to quit the tour.”

“I have pictures,” Puck says. “Of you doing your little routine, and Blaine crying, and then you went off with a twink and earned yourself a big shiny hickey for your trouble. Mike had to go rescue you before you lost your gay v-card in the back alley of a club.”

“ _That’s_ what that bruise was? Thank you for saving me, Mike.”

Mike shrugs and pulls Kurt into a hug, kisses his forehead. “You’re welcome, Kitten Cat.”

Kurt scowls. “You are unthanked. You are so absolutely and completely unthanked for that.”

“You can’t unthank someone, that’s rude,” Mike whines, petting feebly at Kurt’s hip. “Take it back.”

“Shan’t.”

“ _Kit-ten._ Take it back!”

“Nope,” Kurt says, popping the ‘p’ and easing out of Mike’s arms. He turns and finds Blaine staring at him. “ _What_?”

“You’re a virgin?”

Time stands still.

Okay. Time doesn’t actually stand still, it’s probably just the beer making everything go all weird, but the sentiment is very much the same. The room spins, and suddenly everyone has a slightly transparent twin just chilling out beside them while Kurt slowly loses his mind. What little dignity the crazy costumes and make-up had left Kurt with crumbles, leaving him with ashes and no phoenix to speak of.

“Hold on,” Brittany says, putting her phone next to Kurt’s cheek to take a photo and then turning it around to show Quinn. “ _This_ is the exact shade of red I want for my dress when we’re in London.” She pecks Kurt on the cheek. “Thanks Kitten Cat!”

The others positively howl with laughter as Quinn promises Brittany she can make that happen, but it’s nothing but background noise compared to the rush of blood pounding in Kurt’s ears. From the look on Blaine’s face, he’s seeing the twins too.

There’s a bang on the outside of the door, and the driver from Blaine’s bus, a funny old man with lots of laughter lines and a crooked smile, pokes his head in. “Swapping buses?”

“Yeah,” Blaine says, still staring at Kurt. “You coming KitCat? Britt said something about a change to the European shows?”

Kurt swallows, nods, and ignores the wiggling eyebrows being sent his way by the Puckerman brothers and Quinn. Sam follows them onto the other bus and starts picking up bottles of beer. “You want me to leave any of this?” He asks, staggering slightly as Kurt helps him squeeze more bottles into his arms. If he’s aware of the tension between Kurt and Blaine, he doesn’t let on.

Blaine shakes his head, and begins rooting through the cupboard above his head. “You wanted the vodka, right?”

“So long as you can spare it.”

“Knock yourselves out, I think I need a few nights sober. My liver is never going to forgive me if I don’t give it a break.”

Sam salutes Blaine, and a bottle promptly swings down between his fingers and hits him smack in the forehead. Kurt laughs and grabs one of the plastic bags that seem to materialise from nowhere and multiply whenever anyone looks away, holding it out so Sam can dump the beer and vodka inside and save himself from an alcohol induced concussion with none of the buzz. “Nighty night,” Sam grins.

The second the door closes behind Sam, Blaine spins to face Kurt, still looking shell-shocked. “You’re a virgin,” he repeats.

“Not in the way you’re thinking,” Kurt says quickly. “Or maybe in the way you’re thinking. I mean, I’ve done stuff. A _lot_ of stuff. Just not everything.”

“I think we should have kept the vodka after all,” Blaine says, sinking onto the sofa and waving Kurt over to join him. Kurt sits gingerly beside him, leaving an acceptable foot of space between them, but Blaine just scoots closer. He flings his legs over Kurt’s, and leans heavily into Kurt’s side until Kurt gives in and slides down a little, so Blaine can rest his head on Kurt’s chest. Blaine keeps looking up at him, the picture of patience.

Kurt could kill Puck. His pleasant tipsiness has all but subsided, leaving nothing but a dirty taste in his mouth. He and Blaine haven’t talked about this kind of thing before. They talk about a lot of _other_ things, like music and fashion and boyfriends, even their respective pasts. Kurt knows that Blaine’s big brother is an actor, that Blaine has a major in education but was discovered singing in a band shortly after graduating and so never got around to starting his new job as a kindergarten teacher. It’s difficult to reconcile that image of Blaine with the rock star before him now. Kurt’s seen photos, Sam has hundreds, of Blaine in bowties and sweater vests, hair gelled flat. He looks as wholesome as apple pie at eighteen, especially when compared to the current sweaty mess of a twenty-six year old in Kurt’s lap. Two years from being ‘discovered’ to releasing his first solo album, another two for his first tour—and that was all just timing never being right, his oldest fans had been begging for a tour right from Blaine’s very first single at twenty-three.  Just four years to change the entire course of Blaine’s life.

It’s strange how things turn out sometimes.

In turn, Blaine knows everything about Kurt. Knows he lost his mom when he was eight, that he lost his step-brother shortly after he turned twenty. He’s been in the room when Kurt skypes his dad and Carole, even came to Thanksgiving with them last year. When they’d gone to a party and Blaine had introduced Kurt to Isabelle Wright, Kurt had almost died laughing, and then had to explain that they went way back. Long before Kurt had met Blaine. It had taken a few drinks, but Blaine had managed to eke the story of Kurt post-high school out of him that night.

Kurt had been happy enough to tell Blaine about starting NYADA, about his best friend from high school being Rachel Berry (yes, _that_ Rachel, Broadway’s own darling). It had taken Kurt until mid-way through his sophomore year to realize that he preferred the dance and choreography classes to his acting ones, but with a lot of pleading he’d been allowed to switch to a dance based track rather than a musical theatre one. Blaine was constantly pleading to hear Kurt sing, but Kurt quite liked having one thing that Blaine was still in the dark about.

Well, two things.

“I’ve had sex.” He needs to get that into the open straight away, because fuck, he doesn’t need Blaine thinking he’s some twenty-seven year old virgin. Blaine should _know_ that isn’t the case, Kurt definitely remembers them having more than one conversation about rimming etiquette over the years.

“Okay,” Blaine says. “So what did Puck mean?”

“Ihaventhadanythinginmyass,” Kurt says, all in one breath. Blaine blinks.

“In English?”

“I haven’t had anything in my ass. I’ve done hand jobs and blowjobs and I’ve fucked other people, but I’ve never actually…” Kurt lets his voice trail off and hopes that Blaine is done with this conversation now.

“Why?”

Apparently not.

Kurt shrugs, dislodging Blaine from his place against Kurt’s chest. Blaine sits up properly and takes Kurt’s hands, suddenly looking solemn. “Nothing… nothing bad has happened, right? I mean, nobody’s—“

“No!” Kurt says hurriedly. “No, nothing like that. I just don’t really like the idea of a stranger back there, and I seem to always date guys who prefer to bottom. It’s never been an issue.”

“Huh,” Blaine hums, before standing and stretching, eyes slipping closed as he yawned. “All right then. Come on, we’re going to bed.”

“That’s it?”

Blaine cracks one eye back open. “Did you want to talk about it some more?”

Yes. Actually, Kurt really did, because the Blaine Anderson he knew didn’t let things slide. Kurt’s innocuous comment about Blaine never having made out with him had earned him a kiss on _stage_ for god’s sake. There was no way Blaine would let this just drop.

Except for how he clearly was going to, if the relaxed slump of his shoulders were anything to go by. Kurt ran a furtive eye over Blaine’s sides, checking for any weird lumps or bumps that might indicate he’d been replaced by some complacent pod creature, but nope. He looked the same as usual, right down to the soft curve of his belly that only ever disappeared after some Photoshop magic.

Blaine clears his throat, and Kurt blushes at being caught staring. They’d been talking. Right. “No, I just…” Is it worth it? Kurt wonders. Is it worth drawing out a conversation he doesn’t even want to be having? What is there that’s left to say, anyway? “Never mind. I thought you wanted to talk about the European tour?”

“We can talk about it in the morning, I’m exhausted.”

Kurt glances at the sofa, waiting for Blaine to produce blankets or sheets or maybe just a big coat for him to sleep under. What he doesn’t expect is for Blaine to hold out his hand. “Come on, you can share the bed with me.”

* * *

 

They had had time to change out of their costumes and into jeans and t-shirts, but didn’t get to shower after the show. They were too busy being hustled out towards the bus, so Kurt feels gross. His skin is tacky with sweat and make-up, and he knows he must reek of cigarette smoke, because Puck was smoking while he talked to fans, and the wind kept blowing the thin grey plumes in Kurt’s direction.

Blaine doesn’t seem to mind. He’s not in much better a state himself.

He hands Kurt a pack of face wipes, and they sit on the edge of Blaine’s bed and try and get the worst of the make-up off. The eyeliner and eye shadow come off fairly easily, but after ten minutes of scrubbing at both their own and each other’s faces, they have to cry uncle when it comes to the glitter. Nothing but a very hot shower, or maybe the super strong make-up remover Tina keeps in her bag, will budge it.

Blaine throws Kurt sweatpants and an old shirt to sleep in, while he just strips down to his underwear and crawls under the sheets. Kurt feels almost self-conscious, undressing in front of Blaine. It’s ridiculous, they’ve been sharing cramped quarters for a long time, seen each other naked more times than either of them can count, but in the dim light of the bus, Kurt turns his back to undress. Blaine’s sweatpants are way too short, ending high on Kurt’s calves, and the ass is baggy from where Blaine’s own spectacular rear has stretched the material out. His shirt is no good either, again much too small, riding up whenever Kurt moves until it finally settles just above his navel like some sad excuse for a crop top. Blaine is _not_ that short in the torso area, so Kurt suspects he gave him the micro mini shirt on purpose. Kurt gives in and loses it all together, and then gingerly slides into the bed beside Blaine.

“Hi,” Blaine whispers, lying on his side and facing Kurt. The bus lights are out now, but the blinds on the windows are flimsy little things that do nothing to block out the street lights as the bus trundles its way to a new state. The flickers of orange and yellow across Blaine’s skin are almost ethereal, like tiny flames, or maybe fairies that have gotten lost on the highway and are trying to steal a ride across the border by hiding in the dimples of Blaine’s cheeks.

What had been _in_ that beer?

“Hi,” Kurt whispers back, and they both giggle.

Now would be a good time to ask, Kurt knows. To find out why Blaine had snuck into his hotel room the previous night, why he wanted Kurt to share a bed with him tonight. Instead, though, Kurt watches as Blaine raises a finger and begins touching different places on Kurt’s face, his touch feather light as he mouths something Kurt’s not a skilled enough lip reader to make out.

“What?” Kurt asks eventually, turning his head and rubbing it into the pillow to hide how rosy his cheeks have gotten.

“You have so many freckles,” Blaine says. “I’ve never gotten a good look at them before.”

“The wonder of a good foundation,” Kurt replies. “I thought you were tired?”

“I am. I’m counting freckles to send me to sleep.”

“My freckles are not your own personal sheep!” Kurt says, trying for indignant and failing miserably in the wake of long eyelashes and the gleam in Blaine’s eyes.

Blaine doesn’t say anything at all. Eventually Kurt grows tired of the staring and rolls onto his other side, trying to fall to sleep. An hour passes, but Kurt can’t manage it. He can feel Blaine fidgeting, rolling this way and that, making the whole bed rock until Kurt loses his temper and flips back over, catching hold of Blaine and pulling him back so Kurt was spooning him like he had done the previous night. Blaine’s whole body trembles, and then he gives this soft little sigh and falls asleep.

Kurt wonders if he’s faking it at first, refusing to believe anyone can go from restless to a peaceful sleep just like that. He gives Blaine a little shake, but nothing. He really is fast asleep, and sometime after Kurt comes to that conclusion, he too succumbs to heavy eyelids and the steady rhythm of Blaine’s rising and falling chest.

When Kurt wakes up, he almost expects Blaine to be gone, like he was last time. Instead Blaine is still asleep, has rolled onto his belly and is snuffling happily into the pillow. At first Kurt can’t work out what woke him up, still floating in that pleasant fuzzy place between awake and asleep, and then he jolts back to himself in alarm.

He’s hard.

He is very, very hard.

And rubbing himself against Blaine.

Kurt rolls away like he’s been shocked, ending up flat on his back and staring at the roof of the bus.

It’s fine. Blaine’s asleep. He has no idea that apparently a sleepy Kurt is a gross, molester Kurt. Even if he was awake, Blaine would have just laughed it off. It’s that thought that helps settle the pit in Kurt’s stomach, keeps him from throwing up. As well as seeing everyone naked, the band is very used to dealing with UIAFNAGTBs. That is, Unwanted Inappropriate And Frankly Not A Great Time Boners, as Jake had christened them the first time he’d had Sam get hard while they were wrestling. It was just a thing they had to deal with. Cramped spaces, lots of physical contact, and limited to time to jerk off all swamped together led to a _lot_ of UIAFNAGTBs. The girls thought it was hysterical.

It wasn’t a big deal.

Hell, Kurt had dealt with more than his fair share of _Blaine’s_ UIAFNAGTBs. Blaine often got at least a little hard on stage, the result of all that attention being sent his way. Off stage Kurt had to deal with them all the time, because he liked to run through the choreography with Blaine and get his approval, and if they were at a club and people were getting too pushy, Kurt was always being pulled up to dance with Blaine and get them to back off. Sometimes just lying with Blaine watching a movie was enough for Kurt to end up with insistent prodding in his back, and Blaine always just laughed it off and apologized and shifted his hips a little bit.

There was no point trying to read into it. And there was definitely no way Kurt was going to bring up what had just happened with Blaine.

* * *

 

Blaine doesn’t wake up until nearly noon, giving Kurt ample time to browse through the books Blaine had brought with him, cast them all aside as utterly boring, and instead start brainstorming ideas for the European tour change.

Brainstorming that happens to involve him lying upside down off the end of the sofa, willing the blood to rush to his brain and inspire him because he is well and truly stumped.

Blaine walks in just as Kurt is slapping himself, muttering _stupid stupid stupid_.

“Uh,” Blaine says. “Did I just walk in one some whacked out form of dancer self-flagellation? Because I don’t think that’s healthy.”

Kurt laughs so hard he falls off the sofa, and hits his head on the cabinet. “Fuck,” he groans, “that was so your fault. And no, it wasn’t self-flagellation. I was trying to come up with new ideas.”

“Okay, well slapping yourself seems a pretty stupid way to do that,” Blaine observes. He offers Kurt a bottle of water and a cereal bar, about the only sustenance available to them until the bus stops again.  Kurt is suddenly very aware that they didn’t have any dinner last night. He’d murder someone for an egg sandwich. Or bacon. Oh god, _bacon_.

Kurt’s so busy fantasising about all the different ways he could smuggle a bacon sandwich backstage at their next venue without the others noticing, that he doesn’t realise Blaine is talking to him until he tunes into the tail end of what must have been a very one-sided conversation.

“So what do you think?” Blaine asks expectantly.

“Umm…”

“Did you hear anything I just said?”

“Yes! You said, you were talking about that thing, that’s really important, and then you said something…else.”

“I was saying we should all go costume shopping together when we get to England, find some new things to spice up that side of the tour.”

“Oh! Yes,” Kurt says, because _yeah_ he can definitely get behind a shopping trip. It also makes for a good segue into a conversation about changing the dance solo, and the men manage to waste a good few hours discussing lighting and how to really convey sensual using four dancers and just a piece of music. Blaine gets a guitar from one of the closets, tries out a few different pieces, but they keep coming back to the same thing; the original opening to _Night to Night_.

He confirms what Kurt had told the others, about the introduction being cut from the song when the album was being recorded. “It just didn’t fit,” Blaine explains. “With every song we were upping the tempo, and suddenly slowing it all down just to build back up wouldn’t have worked. If we’d put the song at the start of the album we could have pulled it off, but I knew we had to open with _Frostbitten_ for the actual album itself. So it got cut.” He plays a little riff and then looks up at Kurt from under his eyelashes, all sweet and innocent. “That’s why I like the tour so much. We get to change the order, add new pieces, play the full version of the songs… Maybe even get someone else singing with me?”

“Oh no,” Kurt says. “You can pout all you want, I am not singing on this tour. Even _if_ I wanted to, which I don’t, there is no way I’d even attempt to sing one of your songs. My voice doesn’t fit.”

“That’s the beauty of tour! We can try out a _new_ song, write one just for you,” Blaine tries.

“It’s not going to hap—“

Kurt’s cut off by the door swinging open, and Quinn marching up the stairs. “Why do you two even bother having cell phones if you never _check them?_ ” She glares. “Come on, we have one hour to get something to eat and shower before we’re needed for sound check. Actual playing members of the band have called shotgun on the showers already, so dancers are on dinner duty. Get a move on.”

They move.

Blaine follows Quinn into the venue, while Kurt grabs a hoodie from his own bus and then heads over to the streetlight Mike, Jake, and Brittany are waiting under. Jake raises an eyebrow.

“What?”

“You know what, Mr I-Slept-On-The-Boss-Man’s-Bus-And-Am-Still-Wearing-His-Pants.”

“Nothing happened!” Kurt says quickly, pulling his hood up. “We were just trying to work out what we’re going to use for the music. Looks like the original _Night to Night_ opening is our best bet so far, although I’m drawing a blank on the choreography. I hope you’ve had better luck than I have.”

“It’s hard to choreograph something without knowing what the music sounds like,” Mike points out. “Unlike you, we don’t get private performances of Blaine’s songs.”

“It was not a private performance! We were on a break during the shoot so Blaine offered—“

“Blaine wasn’t kidding when he introduced you last night, you know,” Jake cuts in. “You really are his favorite.” The others nod in agreement while Kurt tries to work out where they are. Hopefully it’s somewhere prone to earthquakes, so the ground will open up and swallow him. It would probably be a less painful way to go than spontaneous combustion.

“Dinner,” he declares, before they start teasing him again. “The meatier the better.”

“Tina’s gone back to being vegetarian, and Sam’s only eating animals that look mean when alive, like turkey. We shouldn’t have let him go with Britt to the petting zoo, apparently every time he tries to eat lamb or chicken, all he can see is the lamb he got to bottle feed,” Jake says.

They manage to avoid being recognised as they buy dinner, although that may be more to do with the fact that they ended up just running into McDonalds to save time than anything else. They’re also all still covered in glitter, have sweat stains on their tops, and look more like hobos than travelling rock stars. Nobody had mentioned the less glamourous side of life on the road when Blaine had invited Kurt on tour.

Back at the venue, the band is out running the fastest sound check yet due to time constraints, so the dancers retreat to the showers. Well, it’s more of a shower block than anything, a row of shower heads poking out of a wall with partitions in between that just about cover Kurt’s torso from his nipples to his thighs. He has Jake on one side of him, Mike the other, and Brittany next to Mike. Sixteen year old Kurt would have died a thousand deaths if he had to be in this position. Twenty-seven year old Kurt just flings a wet flannel at Jake’s face when he tries to sneak a peek at Kurt’s tattoos, and lets Brittany nip into his stall to wash the old glitter out of his hair for him.

They’re going to have to stop and do laundry at some point. The dancers all have a steady rotation of outfits they wear, and Kurt’s down to just two clean choices. Since he did a corset last night, he leaves the silver sweetheart necked one in his bag and goes for the sheer black mesh shirt. The less scandalous clothing choice means Kurt has to— okay, so he doesn’t have to, he just chooses to—push the boundaries in a different way. He hasn’t actually worn this shirt on tour yet, they’ve always done laundry before he’s needed to, but he knows just what to pair it with.

The band fall back into the dressing room and get changed, chatting over one another about key changes and timing, while Kurt sits at the mirror and lets Tina puff his hair up, sprinkle a new batch of glitter through it. He toys with a few strands thoughtfully after she leaves. He hasn’t had it cut in a while, and it’s starting to get too long to go up in its usual do. It’s only just staying put now, and that’s just testament to Tina’s super amazing hairspray skills. Kurt takes a few locks of hair at the back of his head and starts to weave, until he has five tiny braids hanging down, invisible unless he shakes or turns his head. He breaks the small bells off one of his old belts and threads them onto the ends of the braids, and then makes an anklet out of the remaining bells and a silver chain he finds at the bottom of his make-up bag. Dancing a few steps across the room, Kurt grins as the bells softly tinkle. They won’t be heard over the music, but they’ll definitely look good if the light catches them right.

“You quite finished over there Tinkerbell?” Puck asks.

Kurt bares his teeth at him in a silly grin but goes back to the mirror, puts on his actual make-up. He isn’t as heavy handed with the eyeliner as normal. He doesn’t need to be.

Blaine walks with him to the stage when it’s time for lights up, flicking the braids as he goes. “Cute,” he observes.

“I’ll do you some next time,” Kurt offers. He’s mostly joking, but Blaine takes him at his word and nods.

“Cool.”

And then Blaine is gone and Kurt is walking to his mark, pulling on the scarlet, close fitting mask from his back pocket. It only frames his eyes, and Kurt worries it’s not going to be dramatic enough, but one look at Blaine’s face when the lights flash on reassures him.  When Blaine introduces him as Kitten Cat that night, it’s his mask that earns him the compliment and the kiss. He’s ready it for this time, and the fans are too if their cheers are anything to go by.

Word spreads fast on the internet.

The night before, the kiss had been fast, a clash of teeth. Tonight it’s gentle, sweet. Kurt has a sneaking suspicion Blaine’s trying to prove that he’s not actually as bad a kisser as last night made him out to be.

It works. When Blaine finally lets him go, Kurt just swoons before falling into a back flip. With his new part in _Frostbitten,_ he doesn’t mind losing most of the time allocated for his solo to Blaine’s mouth.

In fact, as the nights go on and they move from state to state, it quickly becomes Kurt’s favorite part of the show. Sometimes Blaine kisses slow, as gentle as that night. Other times Kurt gets a quick peck, or a mouthful of tongue, or a nip to his lower lip. Blaine’s kisses are unpredictable, utterly unrelated to his mood or how well the show is going, keeping Kurt constantly on his toes. A girl on Tumblr starts compiling the snippets of video of them kissing, gets her followers to vote for which kiss is the hottest. Puck loves nothing more than to connect his phone to the big TV on the bus and play the videos in slow motion. He gets in big trouble with Blaine’s publicist after he posts a video of the band rocking out to the Mamma Mia soundtrack, because the TV is still paused on the latest kiss compilation.

Sam starts keeping a scoreboard of the best kisses, as voted by the fans, although he has the common sense to keep it hidden out of sight when videos and photos are being taken. The first kiss remains a firm favorite, because it was the unexpected one. They do four shows in Michigan, and all four kisses get shot straight into the top ten. The first because it was Blaine’s most dominant, the second because Kurt had gotten his own back the next night and essentially given Blaine’s tongue head, the third because Blaine had bitten Kurt’s lip so hard that the marks had been visible for the rest of the show, and the fourth… well the fourth hadn’t even been a kiss, really. They’d just breathed the same air, and then Blaine had rubbed his nose against Kurt’s, like an Eskimo kiss. The fans had lapped it up.

The kissing becomes an off stage thing as well as an on stage one. Not that Kurt and Blaine’s relationship changes in any other way, that is, and they definitely don’t start making out where the fans can see them. It’s not like they ever sat down and went “okay, we’re going to start putting our tongues in each other’s mouths whenever we want to”. It’s just something that gets added to their repertoire of ways to show their affection for one another, like the hand holding or the endless hugs. Blaine will kiss Kurt goodnight before retreating to his own bus, or if Blaine gets the last bite of chocolate, Kurt will straddle him and they’ll lazily make out until Blaine tastes like Blaine once more. The others take it in their stride, and after the first week of teasing, it just becomes another part of life on tour.

 


	2. Chapter 2

They haven’t had a hotel night in weeks.

There’s been enough time for them to go clubbing between shows, and more than once Puck or Tina or Blaine have stumbled onto the bus with just minutes to spare before they need to drive away, having spent the night in the bed of whoever they’d picked up. Being confined for so long has lost its appeal, so when Quinn announces that they’ll be staying at a private lake for the four day weekend break, Puck actually cries tears of joy.

“We have one cabin,” she tells them as they disembark and are left blinking in the bright sunshine on Friday morning. The drivers leave, going home to see their families and taking the buses with them. The band is on their own until Monday night, and they plan to make the most of their time free from the sardine cans. “But it’s absolutely huge. Five bedrooms, four twins and one single, so we can draw straws to pick roommates or decide like responsible grown-ups.”

Two scuffles and a bloody nose (Puck’s) later, they decide to pick sticks. 

“Equal length sticks are roommates, the shortest stick is partner less and gets the single room,” Tina announces, shuffling the twigs in her hand and then offering her fist to Jake.

“Youngest first!”

Jake ends up sharing with Mike, Tina with Quinn, Sam with Puck, Brittany with Kurt, and Blaine gets the single. He immediately shakes his head. “I already get my own room when we’re on the buses, someone else should get the single.”

Puck and Blaine end up swapping— “I spent four years with Sam as a roommate in college, three nights will be a breeze”— and while Quinn and Mike go to check out the nearest town for food supplies, the others move their stuff into their rooms and unpack.

Well Kurt unpacks. Brittany jumps between the two beds in her and Kurt’s room, trying to decide which was the bounciest and thus best for sleeping on.

The cabin really was huge. It stood two storeys high, with wrap around balconies on the second floor, and had a lounge area and absolutely massive kitchen on the first floor that Mike quickly claimed on his return with Quinn. They were staggering under the weight of the bags they were carrying, and the alcohol was only half to blame. “Mike, we’re here for four days, not four years!” Jake teases, helping him unpack steaks and bunches of leafy carrots.

“I miss cooking,” Mike says, “so I’m going to make the most of being here. Besides, I’m sick of pizza and junk. This is a great chance for you all to remember what vegetables are.”

“Potatoes are vegetables. Fries are made of potatoes. Therefore, fries are vegetables,” Puck argues.

“No, potatoes are carbs,” Tina says.

“Can things not be both carbs and vegetables?” Jake asks, utterly mystified.

Kurt leaves before world war three breaks out right under his nose, and gets outside just in time for Blaine and Sam to go streaking past him and dive off the end of the pier into the lake, absolutely butt naked.

They promptly start shrieking.

“Fuck that’s cold,” Blaine shouts, bouncing in the water.

“Then get out, idiot,” Kurt shouts back, cautiously making his way to the edge of the pier and sitting down. He tests the water with the heel of one foot and shudders violently. Yeah, he’ll definitely be giving the skinny dipping a miss, thanks.

Blaine bobs up at his feet, slicking his hair back and grinning. “Coming in?”

“Over your dead body,” Kurt warns.

Blaine shrugs and turns as if he’s about to swim back to Sam, and then grabs hold of Kurt’s ankle. Kurt doesn’t have time to get away.

He surfaces with a gasp, convinced his lungs have actually frozen in place given the difficult he’s having getting air back into them. “You asshole,” he finally shrieks, climbing clumsily back onto the pier and wrapping his arms around himself, shivering. “You absolute, complete and utter  _shithead._ ”

Blaine laughs at first, and then his eyes go wide. “Your lips are blue!”

“I d-don’t d-do well with c-cold,” Kurt stammers. “My circulation is sh-shit!” He turns on his heel and storms back to the cabin, leaving Blaine calling his name behind him.

It takes thirty minutes under a shower turned as hot as it will go for Kurt’s lips and fingers to turn pink again. Another half an hour in front of the fire roaring in the fireplace, wrapped in a thick blanket and sipping a mug of Mike’s special cocoa—spiked with a good helping of rum— for him to finally stop shivering.

Blaine emerges from his own shower not long after, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. He at least looks contrite, but Kurt isn’t ready to forgive him just yet.

Blaine sits on the rug beside him. Kurt turns his back.

“Sweetheart,” Blaine whines, “don’t be like that. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have dragged you into the lake.”

“No,” Kurt agrees, “you shouldn’t have.” He still doesn’t turn around.

Blaine pulls Kurt back against him, hugging him tightly. “I’m really, really, really sorry. I won’t do it again, promise!”

“You sound like a toddler.  _Pwomise_ ,” Kurt mocks, but there’s no heat behind it. It could be that his core was still frozen, his anger bubbling away inside and waiting to spew forth. Or maybe it was just the fact that being mad at Blaine was impossible, even for Kurt, the master at holding grudges. The worst part was that Blaine knew it, and used it to his full advantage on a regular basis. Blaine only serves to prove Kurt’s point, nuzzling at his neck until he gives in and relaxes into Blaine’s grip, leaning against his chest with a sigh. “Just don’t do it again. It really sucks turning into a snowman.”

“You really are an Ice Prince,” Blaine says. “I never realised  _Frostbitten_ was so applicable.”

“Blaine, I just forgave you. Do not make me cross again. I  _will_ dump boiling cocoa on your crotch.”

Blaine flinches.

He doesn’t let go, though.

Tina saves the day, leading the rest of the band to sit cross-legged on the floor in a circle with them. “We’re going to play a game,” she announces.

Quinn’s immediately back on her feet, shaking her head, but Brittany and Jake wrestle her back to the ground and pin her between them. “Easy there, spitfire,” Jake says. “Let’s hear what she has to say.”

“I want to sunbathe,” Quinn whines.

It’s cold out, but the sun is beaming down and Kurt’s pretty sure that if she had it her way, Q would be stark naked on the roof of the cabin to make sure she didn’t get tan lines. Instead, she gets pulled into a game of Cards against Humanity that Mike produces.

“So have we had this on tour with us the whole time?” Puck asks, “Because dude, that’s mean. I was  _so_ bored last week and you could have just got this out.”

“I was saving it for the flight to London,” Mike says. “Only then I realised we’ll probably end up with a row of kids in front of us, and like, sweet little old ladies behind, and they don’t need to hear the depraved games we like to play.”

“The kids I can understand, but dude, the old ladies would probably play with us.”

“Yeah,” Kurt chimes in, “the elderly are kind of insane just by default.”

“What old people have you two being hanging out with?” Mike asks.

They shrug. The atypical loonies, apparently. Kurt can see Mike’s point though. He’d met Mike’s grandparents at a big “we’re going on tour together, let’s meet each other’s families and have a good time” dinner a few months ago. He had the kind of grannies you saw in storybooks, the ones who spent their time knitting cosy sweaters and baking with their hundreds of grandkids. Kurt only had one living grandmother, and she was a raging alcoholic with a bad temper and wicked sense of humor. He knew for a fact that Puck and Jake had a Nana who out-swore them on a daily basis and had been arrested three times since turning sixty.

Maybe it was a good thing they hadn’t been able to make it to the dinner with the rest of the families.

They pause the game halfway through for lunch, and Mike provides them with food that wouldn’t be out of place at a kid’s picnic. Banana and honey sandwiches, cream cheese and ham rolls, sticks of baguette smothered in butter, bowls and bowls of different flavoured chips, cold cuts of chicken and turkey, carrot sticks, celery, cubes of cheese… to top it all off, when they’re all rolling on the floor groaning that they’ll never be able to eat anything ever again, he produces a rich chocolate cake.

“We’re going to gain so much weight by the time we go back to the tour,” Tina moans, although that doesn’t stop her from having two helpings of cake  _and_ finishing off Mike’s slice when he tires.

Quinn refuses the cake at first, swearing she’s too full to eat so much as one morsel, but as she watches the rest of them chow down, she starts to sway. She has a little bit of the icing off of Brittany’s slice, and then decides maybe she could eat a teeny weeny bit. Apparently, ‘teeny weeny’ in Quinn speak means a vast slab of the chocolate goodness. Puck and Sam cheer her on, hooting and hollering their encouragement as she tackles it, until she’s laughing too hard to get the fork in her mouth. As everyone else finishes their desserts, they start cheering too, until the cabin starts to resemble Truncheon Hall, with Quinn as their very own Bruce.

By the time Quinn swallows her last mouthful, Kurt’s stomach is hurting from laughing so hard. Blaine doesn’t seem to be faring any better, leaning heavily on Kurt as he wipes tears off his cheeks, only for more to take their place.

Puck has his phone out and has been filming the whole thing with shaking hands. “That’s going on YouTube,” he announces as he lowers his phone.

“No!” Quinn gasps.

“Oh yes!” The rest of the band chorus.

“So many calories,” Quinn says, staring pathetically down at the decimated cake platter.

“Calories schmallories, we’re on vacation. If Mike wants us all to gain twenty pounds before returning to the buses, I for one am entirely on board,” Jake says.

“Says dancer boy who can wear leggings on stage,” Quinn says, still sour. “I have skinny jeans to deal with.”

“You don’t  _have_ to wear skinny jeans,” Blaine points out. “It’s not like I enforce a uniform or anything. Wear whatever you want. Leggings, skirts, you can perform in your underwear for all I care.”

“We do so have a uniform,” Sam laughs, “sex appeal. That’s our uniform.”

“Was that in the contract?” Brittany pipes up, perfectly serious.

“You know what should have been in the contract? ‘When we can no longer fit into our costumes without looking like hideous muffin topped morons, Blaine Anderson will pay for a new wardrobe’,” Quinn says.

Kurt slides along the floor until he’s sat opposite Quinn and takes her hands in his, holding her gaze. “Lucy Q,” he says firmly. “You are beautiful, from the roots of your pink hair to the ghastly paint job you’ve done on your toes. You will still be beautiful if Mike makes you gain twenty pounds with his wonderful feasts. You could gain another two  _hundred_ pounds, and you still wouldn’t look like a muffin topped moron. I won’t have you talking down about yourself like that, especially not when a good thirty percent of our fan base are impressionable young boys and girls.”

Quinn blushes pink under her foundation, but tries to work her face into a frown. “It’s not like I’d talk like that in front of any of them,” she mutters.

“I feel like this is just one big hint that you want new clothes,” Blaine says.

“Actually, it’s a hint that I want new clothes that I don’t have to pay for.”

“Me too,” Jake says.

“And me three!” Brittany chimes in.

Blaine laughs, not looking the slightest bit offended that his friends are trying to use him as their own personal wallet. “What was the town like?”

“Pretty small, but the woman in the store said there’s a bigger one about an hour away. There’s a bus that goes from the end of the hiking trail to it every two hours.”

“I guess we’re going shopping tomorrow then,” Blaine says. “If anyone else wants new clothes, you better come with us. I’m not trusting you lot alone with my card, I’ll be getting ornate bird cages and boats delivered to my house until the  _next_ tour.”

“There’s going to be another one?” Jake asks.

“Once I finish writing the next album, you bet. This tour is doing well enough that I don’t think the company will turn it down.”

“Doing well enough,” Kurt snorts, “you’ve had to add three countries and another twenty-seven shows since we started, because it keeps selling out!”

“Thirty-two shows and four countries,” Tina corrects, “we’ve lost the ten days off between England and Germany because they’ve put another night in for Birmingham, and then they want us to go do four shows in Ireland.”

It’s Blaine’s turn to go pink.

That afternoon, Mike holes himself up in the kitchen and orders everyone to keep out of the way. “Go burn off some energy, make yourselves hungry again,” he says, waving a whisk at them all before slamming the door shut.

Puck and Jake talk Tina, Blaine, and Brittany into going hiking with them, and Quinn retreats to the roof for her nude sunbathing session. “You’ll freeze your nipples off!” Puck warns, but Quinn just laughs and waves them on. “Why isn’t she more concerned about death by ice?” Puck asks, baffled.

“She grew up in Alaska,” Kurt says, zipping a water bottle into Blaine’s rucksack. “I doubt this even registers as chilly to her.”

Blaine frowns. “I thought she grew up in Cincinnati?”

“No, her family moved there when she was fourteen.”

“How come you knew that and I didn’t? I’ve known her longer.”

Blaine actually sounds put out. Brittany puts an arm around his shoulders comfortingly. “It’s okay Blaine, just because you’ve known someone a long time doesn’t mean you know them better. You know Kurt way better than you know Sam!”

“No I don’t—“

“No he doesn’t—“

Kurt and Blaine stop, stare at one another.

“Sure you do,” Sam says. “We’ve known each other, what, twelve years? Kurt’s known you for two. What’s my favorite color?”

“Blue. No, red. Oh no, wait, it’s yellow!”

“Uh huh, and what’s Kurt’s?”

“You know when the sky is just starting to clear after a thunderstorm at night? When the clouds are still angry, but there’s that sense of calm as well? As the clouds get wispier, the sky behind them looks this amazing shade of purple and black, with bits of grey flecked across, and sometimes you can still the stars shining behind them all. That’s Kurt’s favorite color.”

The band—bar Mike and Quinn—stare.

“What?” Blaine asks. “I’ve asked Kurt to describe his favorite color before, I don’t remember ever asking Sam! That’s an unfair question to base this on.”

“Okay,” Tina says, “you’ve made them both breakfast before, right?”

“Yeah.”

“How do they like their eggs?”

“Kurt likes them scrambled or in an omelette, sunny side up makes him feel sick and he hates a runny yolk.”

“And me?” Sam asks.

There’s a long pause. “Boiled?” Blaine eventually tries, already wincing.

Sam snorts. “You know Kurt best, it’s fine. I accepted that he’d be your favorite like the third time we ever met him. Just so long as he’s the only person I come second to, I can handle it. Go on your hike, the lot of you, I need a nap.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” Jake asks Kurt.

“I need to catch up on all that sleep we’ve been losing since Puck started snoring.”

“I do not snore!” Puck says indignantly.

“Dude, we have the recording. Go tramp through the woods and get lost, Kurt and I are going to be nap buddies. We can bond and shit.”

The others wander off in the direction of the hiking trail, but Blaine hovers next to Kurt and Sam. He’s trying to be cool about it, operating under the pretence of making sure his rucksack is zipped up properly, but it’s obvious he’s trying to listen in and make sure Kurt and Sam aren’t planning anything.

Sam pulls a face at Kurt. “You’re going to end up too far behind the others to catch up, Blaine. Relax, I’m not trying to steal your boy or anything. We’ll be napping in separate bedrooms, won’t we Kurt?”

Kurt pouts. “But Sa-am, you promised we could tell him all about our torrid love affair this weekend,” he whines, slinging an arm around Sam’s shoulders and snuggling up to him. To his credit, Sam doesn’t bat an eyelash, just turns and presses a kiss to the side of Kurt’s head. Blaine actually looks uncertain, staring at them both. Ten very long, very silent seconds go by, and then Kurt and Sam snap. It’s their second serious laughing fit in as many hours, and Kurt thinks his ribs might actually be bruised from the inside after the assault his full lungs must be giving them.

“You’re not really having an affair, right?” Blaine says slowly. “I’m not sure how well Mercedes would take to a polyamorous relationship.”

“’Cedes loves me. I’m her boo, remember?” Kurt teases. Then he relents. “We’re not having an affair, honey. If we were, our fans would probably christen us something awful like ‘Kum’, I mean, seriously, for that alone I would never ever ever ever ever ever  _ever_  date him.”

“Hey!” Sam says, but Blaine’s smile comes back full force and he nods, giving them both a cheery wave goodbye before sprinting after the others. Sam waits until he’s completely vanished into the trees before grinning at Kurt. “We’re not going to take a nap, are we?”

“Nope. I need you to come help me with something.”

Kurt’s never actually spent much time alone with Sam before. Whenever they’ve hung out, it’s been as a band, or a threesome with Blaine, sometimes even a foursome if Mercedes is around. They don’t have very much in common; if Kurt had met Sam at a party or in the street, he’d never have given him a second thought. Now though, faced with an afternoon alone together and no distractions in sight, Kurt learns that he really does enjoy Sam’s company. Their interests might not cross over much, but as Kurt leans his head over the bathtub in his and Brittany’s ensuite, he finds they share one big passion.

Shitty reality TV shows.

As Sam pours bleach over the ends of Kurt’s hair, he says in a frankly awful approximation of an Essex accent, “I can’t speak for definite Loz, but there’s no way that turning your hair gray won’t work. He wants mature, we’ll give ‘em old lady chic.”

Kurt very warily opens one eye. “Did you just quote Slugs and Snails?”

Sam’s eyes light up. “You got my reference?”

“ _You_ watch Slugs and Snails?”

“My sister does,” Sam shrugs, “when I went to visit her she made me marathon the first two seasons, and since then I’ve not missed an episode. Well, until tour started.”

Kurt slowly sits back up, making sure the towel is secure around his shoulders before nodding towards the bathroom door. “This needs to sit for a while. Want to go catch up on a few episodes?”

“Yeah! Where are you up to?”

“Episode six.”

“Same! So, what did you think about Whit taking Ethan’s side over Daniel’s? It’s so obvious she’s doing it because she’s in love with Rory and doesn’t want to admit he’s a complete backstabbing bastard, right?”

“There is no way you are a straight boy,” Kurt mutters under his breath as they settle onto one of the big squishy sofas and turn on the TV.

When the band return from their hike, having collected Quinn from the roof, they walk into the cabin to find Kurt and Sam sobbing together on the sofa while Kurt paints Sam’s toe nails. Hair bleached to brown with orange streaks, Kurt’s nose is red from where he’s been sniffing, eyes puffy. Sam’s no better, his cheeks streaked with tears, and every few seconds, he wipes his nose on the sleeve of his sweater.

“What’s happened?” Blaine asks, horrified. “Has someone died?”

“Yes!” Kurt and Sam chorus, gesturing emphatically at the TV, which is switched off and surrounded by things that have obviously been thrown at it in a fit of rage—couch cushions, tissues, magazines, Sam’s left shoe…

Sam continues, “Daniel got kicked off! He was the best one! That’s as bad as being killed, and now awful Ethan is going to be crowned the winner even though he’s a total slug!”

“You’re upset over a… TV show?” Tina clarifies.

“It’s not  _just_ a TV show!” Kurt says, and Sam nods frantically in agreement. “Those are real people, Tina. Real people getting kicked off a show for completely unfair reasons. It’s all vile Ethan’s fault.”

“Okay,” Blaine says soothingly, “we understand. Vile Ethan, poor Daniel. Just explain to me, how did your distress at the news of the loss lead to Sam getting his nails painted? Because I’ve never been able to get him to agree to let me paint them.”

“Kurt can be very persuasive,” Sam shrugs. “Besides, look! They’re awesome and polka-dotty!”

That night, after everyone has stuffed themselves with yet another feast— brown chicken stew, a recipe Mike’s all-time favorite au pair growing up had taught him, as well as a vegetable curry, and lots of fancy tartlets for dessert— Blaine waves Kurt over to join him by the fire. The rest of the band have retreated to bed, happy to catch up on some sleep that doesn’t require bruised limbs or egos the morning after.

They stretch out on their stomachs, basking in the warmth. For a long time neither of them say anything, happy to just enjoy the company and the quiet, but eventually Kurt opens his eyes and finds Blaine is staring at him.

“I hope you’re not trying to count freckles again,” Kurt says.

Blaine shakes his head. “What’s with the…,” he trails off, waving a hand vaguely at Kurt’s hair.

“Oh.” Kurt reaches up to touch the bleached strands. “I got Sam to do it for me, this is just what color it got stripped too. Don’t worry, I’m dying it again tomorrow, I won’t go back on tour with ginger streaks. I just need Quinn to do the actual color, she’s got the best eye for it.”

“What’s wrong with your normal color?”

“Nothing,” Kurt says, frowning. “I just wanted a change. Is that not okay with you or something?”

“No, it’s fine, it’s fine, I bet it’ll look great,” Blaine says, trying to laugh it off. Kurt could press it, if he wanted to, but it’s late and he’s tired, and right now he just wants a blanket and for Brittany to not wake him up to see the sunrise in the morning. “I was just wondering is all. We should go to bed, early start tomorrow to catch the bus!”

“Even earlier start for me,” Kurt sighs regretfully, “I’m not going to town until my hair is dyed.”

“So you’re going brave waking the sleeping she-bear?”

Kurt grimaces. “If you find my body at the bottom of the stairs, you know what happened.”

“I’ll keep an ear out,” Blaine promises. He stands and stretches, his loose shirt riding up to give Kurt a flash of ribs, the muscles of his arms making the sleeves go tight. “Come on Goldilocks, you can’t face her without sleeping first. Didn’t you ever read the fairy tale? You don’t get mauled until after the porridge and the broken chair and sleeping in the wrong bed.”

“In the version I heard, Goldilocks jumps out of the window and escapes without a scratch on her.” Kurt follows Blaine up the stairs, rubbing his eyes sleepily.

“Really?” Blaine looks surprised, but then he just laughs quietly as they approach the bedrooms containing their sleeping bandmates. “Cooper was always in charge of telling me bedtime stories, I guess he made them as gruesome as possible. Night KitCat.”

“Night,” Kurt echoes. Blaine leans forward, like he’s about give Kurt an actual kiss goodnight, but pulls back at the last second and smiles instead. His smile is too big, teeth too white in the dim light as he backs into his own bedroom.

When Kurt sinks into his bed, he’s left feeling confused, bewildered really.

Blaine’s never stopped himself from getting a kiss before.

Later that night, long after the cabin has gone completely silent (aside from the rumbling snores from Puck’s room, of course), Kurt wakes up to the mattress dipping beside him. The person beside him is holding their breath, so Kurt makes an effort to keep his own breathing slow, regular, eyes closed. “Kurt?” They whisper. He doesn’t move, and eventually they very carefully stretch out beside him, taking one of his arms and wrapping it around themselves. The scent of the apple shampoo that Blaine buys in bulk whenever he sees it fills Kurt’s nose. He gives himself five minutes to make sure that Blaine has fallen back to sleep, and then five more after that to be really really sure, before rolling over and curling himself around Blaine.

Kurt sleeps better than night than he has for weeks.

* * *

 

Dawn breaks, and Blaine is gone.

It takes three mugs of coffee and a promise of a foot rub, but Quinn manages to keep her eyes open long enough to dye Kurt’s hair. By the time he’s rinsed out and blow-dried, leaving his hair down after it becomes clear that it really is too long to be swept up until he gets it cut again, the others are at the bus stop.

Kurt half-walks, half-sprints to the end of the road.

The band are all there, propping one another up and fake snoring. When Kurt clears his throat, they all snap to attention and act amazed.

“Oh Mama,” Blaine gasps, clutching at Brittany’s arm, eyes glinting, “it appears our prayers were answered. Just when we thought all was lost, the hundred year sleep has ended and our prince has awoken!”

Kurt smacks his wrist. “Did I keep you waiting long?”

“Oh no—“

“Only forever—“

“But don’t worry or anything—“

“Just turning eighty over here—“

“I always knew I could pull off wrinkles—“

“You’re all hilarious,” Kurt deadpans, before turning back to Blaine. “And seriously, what is it with you and fairy tales at the moment?”

The bus trundles up before Blaine can answer. It’s a big rickety monster of a thing, and Kurt is honestly afraid to breathe on it in case it all shatters into a heap of metal and pipe. One of the mirrors is actually fastened to the side of the bus with rubber bands and paper clips. When the band climb on board and wait for Blaine to pay for their tickets, the other occupants openly gawp.

There’s a group of middle-aged women sat in a huddle, in big bright sweaters and matching scuffed boots. Further back are three teenage boys with rucksacks and tents, and a farmer who, upon closer inspection—meaning Jake hopping up and down next to Puck to get a better look at him, honestly, he couldn’t be more conspicuous—actually has a lamb pinned between his knees. Kurt’s done the country thing, he grew up in Ohio for fuck’s sake, but this place is another hundred miles past the back of beyond.

He shoots the rest of the band a frantic look.

Where the fuck are they?

There’s one consistent factor between the locals. They all have expressions of utter slack jawed astonishment.

Kurt can’t really blame them.

The locals are unkempt in a “we live in the middle of nowhere where there’s a constant furious wind and nobody to pay attention to what we look like” kind of way. The band are unkempt in the artful, just-rolled-out-of-bed-although-actually-it-took-thirty-minutes-to-get-my-hair-like-this way. The Puckerman brothers, Blaine, Brittany, Mike, and Sam are all wearing tight jeans and tank tops, with hoodies or coats pulled on over the top to keep warm. They might not have attracted very much attention alone, even with all the piercings and the fact that their clothes are obviously expensive. Even Blaine’s light eyeliner might have been dismissed. However, Tina is wearing a neon pink dress with striped tights and knee high boots, and Quinn has on a carefully ripped mesh miniskirt, stockings and biker boots. They would have stood out in a big city, never mind here, and that’s without even considering their brightly colored hair.

And Kurt isn’t helping matters either.

Oh, he’s not in anything neon or mini, but the mixture of chains and lengths of silky fabric hanging from his belt loops don’t exactly scream country boy. Over a black tank top— that apparently the entire band owns and decided to wear today— he has on the gray off the shoulder sweater that he  _might_ have borrowed off of Brittany and never got around to returning.

Plus the brand new purple streaks in his hair, of course. Maybe he should have waited to do the dye until Monday.

Or maybe he shouldn’t have shaved. The stubble might have helped him stand out as male, because when he catches his reflection in the window, his first thought is wondering when another girl got on the bus without them noticing.

“Upstairs?” Mike ventures.

“Upstairs,” the rest of them agree, and they climb up to the top deck of the bus. Quinn insists that Kurt climbs up behind her—“You and Blaine are the only ones who won’t try and look up my skirt, last time I let Britt go behind me she complimented me on my underwear!”— but aside from that, they reach the deck without any drama.

“Mike,” Kurt begins when everyone has sat down, leaning forward to poke his head between Mike and Sam’s seats, “will you cut my hair when we get back to the cabin? Please?” He juts his lower lip out for added effect, and Mike sighs.

“Why me?”

Kurt jerks his head at everyone else. “You honestly think I’d trust any of them with scissors near my head?”

“Fair point,” Mike says. “Remind me when we get back.”

Blaine elbows Kurt as he sits back in his own seat, raising an eyebrow. “Why do you want your hair cut? It looks great. I like the purple.” He tugs on a strand fondly.

“Last night you looked like you were going to sue Sam for bleaching it.”

“Yeah, well,” Blaine coughs, “that was nothing.” He runs a hand through Kurt’s hair, ruffling it all up and then smoothing it back down. “You have great hair, why cut it?”

“I can’t do anything with it!”

“Sure you can! You can tie it back if it gets in the way, or let it stay loose—“

“I look like a girl,” Kurt says.

“So what?”

Kurt stares. Blaine seems to realise what he said, because he rushes to add, “I just mean, you never seem to let things like that bother you before. You’re on stage in corsets and eyeliner most nights, and the other week you had braids!”

“So you think I look like a girl on stage,” Kurt says cautiously.

“No! You look like  _you_ , like Kurt. I like how you look on stage. It’s this really cool mix of feminine and masculine, it’s incredible. You act like you don’t care what anyone thinks, you just want to look good, and when you wear that stuff you absolutely ooze confidence. I love it.”

Blaine needs to stop building him up, stop saying things like that. It’s fine when Blaine gushes about a new move or Kurt’s personality, but when Blaine strays into his appearance Kurt’s skin starts to itch. Some of the compliments he gives Kurt are things you’d say to a lover, not a friend, not even a best friend. It isn’t good for them to keep shuffling the lines back and forth like this.

“You really need to work on a filter,” is what he says instead.

“Have I really offended you?” Blaine asks, looking so forlorn that Kurt takes pity.

“No, I’m not offended. I am still getting Mike to cut my hair when we get back though.”

Blaine opens his mouth, then seems to think better of it and shuts it again. He starts humming instead, songs Kurt recognises from old movie soundtracks he’s watched with his Dad. Sam and Jake pull most of the band into a game of I Spy, so Kurt moves to the back of the bus and spends the rest of the journey dozing beside Quinn.

He jolts awake as the bus comes to a creaking halt, Blaine’s hand on his shoulder. “Hey,” Blaine says softly, “time to go sleepyhead. There’s a civil war broken out, half the band wants breakfast and half want to start shopping. You’re our deciding vote.”

Kurt groans as he stumbles down the stairs behind Blaine, running his fingers through his hair in an attempt to rearrange the tangle into something presentable. The rest of the band are already on the sidewalk, bickering, but they fall silent when Kurt appears, turning to him expectantly.

“Well?” Tina says.

“Breakfast.”

“Yes!” Mike, Blaine, Quinn, and Sam high-five, while the others sigh.

The breakfast options in Rowanport transpire to be rather limited. There’s a bakery, one small café on the street corner, or a 1950’s style diner to choose from. There are an abundance of sticks, but the band don’t need to resort to pick-a-stick for this. All things considered, at least the fewer options makes for an easy decision.

One hour and several stacks of waffles later, Kurt feels considerably more human. Brittany dabs at the corner of Jake’s mouth, cleaning the syrup from his pancakes away while he complains that she’s worse than his mother, and Puck receives a similar treatment from Sam. “You’re so messy!” Sam clucks, “I swear, my kid brother doesn’t make as much of a mess as you two.”

Blaine catches hold of Kurt’s hand as they all make their way towards the strip of shops their waitress had told them about. “Feeling better?”

“I never said I felt bad,” Kurt snaps immediately, before sighing and apologising. “Sorry, still waiting for the coffee to work. Thanks for breakfast.”

That triggers a collective round of thank yous from the rest of the group, which Blaine waves away, his attention remaining focused solely on Kurt. “What are you buying today?”

Kurt shrugs. He hasn’t given much thought to it, he doesn’t want Blaine spending money on him. Well, breakfast aside, obviously. “I think I’m just here to make sure Tina doesn’t buy any more neon.”

Blaine snorts, nods.

Despite what he says, Kurt does end up letting Blaine buy him a few things. There’s a vintage clothing shop tucked between two much bigger stores, and in there Kurt finds a waistcoat, some new belts. When he goes to pay himself, the man behind the register shakes his head, nods towards Blaine and explains that the “nice gentleman” had already given him his card and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Kurt gets sneaky after that. While everyone else goes to buy jeans, Kurt feigns a headache and says he wants to stay outside because of the loud music in the store. He waits until he can no longer see them in the windows, and then crosses to the fabric shop he’s had his eye on since they first got off the bus. Inside he picks up ribbons, thread, and a pack of feathers, before buying several lengths of fabric. Kurt’s always been a fast shopper, and there’s even time for him to go to the craft shop next door and pick up some card and glitter before he has to go back over to wait for the others.

When they eventually emerge, laden down with bags, Blaine frowns. “What happened to your headache?” He asks, pointing accusingly at the bags at Kurt’s feet.

“The shops I went to didn’t have music playing.”

Blaine looks as though he wants to argue, insist that Kurt lets him give him the money for what he bought, but before he can Jake swings an arm around Kurt’s shoulders and gives an almighty squeeze. “Guess what?” He gushes, but before Kurt actually can guess, he carries on with, “there’s a tattoo and piercing studio right around the corner, one of the guys in there were telling me about it after I admired his tats.”

“You want a tattoo?” Kurt supposes he should have seen it coming. Jake’s always been fascinated by Kurt’s own tattoos, sneaking looks whenever he thought Kurt wouldn’t notice.

“Yeah! Can we go check it out? Please?”

The rest of the band end up tagging along. Mike, Puck, Quinn, and Tina all have tattoos already, and are talking over one another giving Jake advice about designs and location and pain thresholds. Sam and Brittany are clear-skinned but interested enough to be listening. Blaine is way to the back of the group, trailing behind, lost in his own world. He looks sad, Kurt realises. There are shadows under his eyes that even the best foundation couldn’t cover up, the easy smile and dimples nowhere to be found. As Blaine walks, he hunches in on himself, losing his usual confident stride.

He’s gotten thin, much thinner than he was when the tour started, thinner even than just a few weeks ago. The bulk of his coat can’t disguise how delicate his wrists have become, how his skinny jeans are almost baggy on him now. Kurt thinks back to yesterday, when Blaine had dove into the lake with Sam. There’d been nothing to him, he realises. He’d been too busy thinking how idiotic they were to notice then, but as the memory clears, Kurt can see every rib, every knob of Blaine’s spine. Yesterday had been the first time Kurt had heard him properly laugh in weeks.

And suddenly Kurt is so ashamed of himself, for not realising what was happening right before his eyes. For not doing something to help Blaine sooner.

He’s seen this happen before. Just once, not long after they’d started working together. Kurt had been woken up by his phone beeping, the clock on his bedside table telling him it was 4am. He’d immediately thought the worst, that something had happened to his dad or Carole, but it was Blaine’s number that flashed up on the screen, a text asking Kurt to come over. Kurt had gone, and found Blaine sat in the bathtub of his ensuite, staring blankly at the wall. It took a while, but Kurt managed to coax Blaine downstairs, get him to drink some water, and then it had all come pouring out. Blaine was overworked, stretched too thin, had been going from interview to studio to interview for months and hadn’t been able to so much as breathe without someone somewhere being insulted by it. A combination of stress and media attention had left him drowning, begging soundlessly for assistance while trying to keep himself afloat. It only took a weekend for Blaine to recover, to go back to eating three meals a day instead of grabbing a cereal bar while on the run. He’d just needed to decompress, to take a few days off work and veg out, to have someone  _listen_.

Kurt could only hope the same could be said for this time.

“You okay there?” Kurt asks gently as he drops back to walk with him.

Blaine glances up at him and smiles, but there’s no sparkle, no galaxies contained in his empty eyes.  “’m fine,” he says.

Kurt takes his hand and squeezes. No you’re not, he wants to say, talk to me. But they’re at the studio now, and he doesn’t think this is the kind of conversation you’re meant to have when surrounded by other people. As much as he wants to drag Blaine to a private corner, he knows it’ll be useless. Blaine will clam up.

Instead, Kurt presses a sweet, chaste kiss to the corner of Blaine’s mouth, a  _we’ll talk later_ passing unspoken between them, and then he follows Jake to the counter.

Despite going to the studio as support for Jake, Kurt walks out with two new nipple piercings. Brittany is delighted and keeps flicking at them through his shirt, until on the bus journey back Kurt has to tie her hands together using one of scarves he’s been wearing as a belt. “They  _hurt_ Britt,” he snaps. “Stop touching!”

He isn’t sure quite how it happened. One minute he was chatting to the girl as she set up the tattoo machine, the next her twin sister had him sitting on a chair as she thrust a needle through his left nipple. He could have it left it there, he  _should_ have left it there, but the rush of adrenaline had led to him agreeing to get the right one done at the same time. Corsets were definitely going to be out of the question for the next few shows. Just the thin material of the tank top and sweater rubbing over his nipples has him whimpering as the bus jolts and judders its way back to the hiking trail.

As they jump down off the bus and start the walk back towards the cabin, it finally occurs to Kurt just how odd it must look for him to be leading Brittany by her bound hands. The bus driver probably thinks there’s about to be a re-enactment of all those horror movies that take place in cabins in the middle of nowhere. He doesn’t try and come to Brittany’s aid though.

Blaine vanishes for the rest of the afternoon. Kurt tries looking for him, but Blaine has spent years learning how to be invisible from a crowd, a necessity anyone with as large a fanbase as Blaine’s picks up quickly, and the search is fruitless. He doesn’t make a reappearance until evening, when Mike is dishing up big bowls full of stir fry. After dinner, everyone heads into the main room to watch Friends reruns, so Kurt takes the opportunity to go up to his empty room and unwind.

He opts to leave off a shirt once he’s showered, not wanting to irritate his new piercings any further, and settles down on the floor of his room with headphones and the material he’d bought in Rowanport.

An hour later, when the outlines to three new shirts are pinned together and hanging on the wardrobe door waiting to be sewn, Kurt looks up from where he’s been cutting a piece of cardboard and finds Blaine sat on the end of his bed, watching.

He takes off his headphones.

“How long have you been there?”

Blaine shrugs, picking at the hem of his pyjama pants. His hair is damp, droplets of water still clinging to his eyelashes and neck. The make-up of the day is long washed off, leaving Blaine with slightly red-rimmed eyes, the shadows below them vivid in the yellow lamp light.

“You gonna talk to me now, peanut?” Kurt asks. Blaine’s mouth twitches at the name, but he doesn’t speak. He slides onto the floor by Kurt’s side and wriggles under his arm, cuddling as close as he can get. After a few minutes of silence, Kurt goes back to cutting the cardboard into mask shapes, and then flicks through his fabric. “I was thinking of making masks my thing for the next leg of the tour,” he says conversationally. “Masks for Canada, and then by the time we go to Europe I should be able to wear my corsets again. Maybe find something else for Australia, I haven’t quite worked it out yet. What do you think?”

“Yeah,” Blaine murmurs, “it’ll look great.” He starts going through the fabric too, coming up with a length of red satin that Kurt had picked up to make something with for the rest of the dancers. It was too bright a color for him, he’d be washed out if he wore it as a shirt and he already had a red mask. The dancers tried to co-ordinate colors for every show, so Kurt was hoping he had bought enough material to make Brittany a skirt, Jake a waistcoat or a shirt depending on his preference, maybe even get a tie out of it for Mike.

Blaine moves on to the feathers, picking through them and ordering them by size, then by width. Kurt catches hold of his hand when he goes to sort them by color as well, uses his other to lift Blaine’s chin and force him to meet his eyes. “Talk to me.”

For a moment Blaine looks like he’s going to refuse, and then his whole body slumps fully into Kurt’s, all the tension bleeding out as though someone took a knife to his strings. “I’m just tired. I’ve not been sleeping very well.”

“Or eating,” Kurt points out, running a hand along Blaine’s ribs for emphasis.

“Or eating,” Blaine agrees. “It’s not intentional, we’re just so busy all the time. I don’t get hungry when I’m stressed so I just forget to eat unless someone reminds me, and being on tour it’s like—“

“Being in a bubble,” Kurt finishes. “I know.”

Blaine looks so miserable that Kurt has to kiss him, framing his face in his hands and taking over. Normally Blaine dominates their kisses, the kiss in Michigan had been Kurt’s one exception on tour and he could count the number of times he’d been in control of one of their off stage kisses on one hand, but now it seems appropriate. Blaine struggles at first, not fighting to get away but to be the one calling the shots, but eventually he submits, lets Kurt move his face where he wants it and nip at his lower lip. When Kurt pulls away, Blaine’s lips are slightly swollen, and he manages a weak smile.

“When we’re back on the buses, I’m going to come find you for lunch,” Kurt says firmly. The band do dinner together most nights, but breakfast and lunch are frequently a solo affair as everyone wakes up at different times. Blaine can’t get through the tour on one meal a day. Kurt won’t allow it. He makes a note to get Quinn and Sam to help keep an eye on Blaine, make sure he has some form of breakfast or lunch. If he’s not with him, they normally are. “And if we can’t eat together, I’ll be texting you a reminder to get something to eat. I’ll even text the people you’re with if I have to.”

Blaine says thank you and moves to get up, like he thinks that’s the end of things. Kurt pulls him back down, tugs Blaine until he’s in Kurt’s lap, facing him. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”

Blaine shrugs again.

“Peanut,” Kurt warns, and Blaine starts giggling, hiding his face in Kurt’s shoulder.

“You can’t use that tone while calling me that,” Blaine whines, “I can’t take you seriously.”

“If you weren’t being such a brat right now, I wouldn’t need to take a tone.”

“I’m not being a brat! Not deliberately,” Blaine adds, catching Kurt’s sceptical look. “I just… It sounds stupid if I say it out loud.”

“You could never sound stupid, sweetheart. It’s just you and me.”

Blaine’s hands find their way to the hair at the base of Kurt’s neck, long enough for him to wind his fingers through because Kurt forgot to get Mike to cut it. “I don’t like sleeping alone,” Blaine whispers.

Kurt wrinkles his nose, confused. “Okay…?”

Blaine sighs. “You don’t get it. It’s not like, I just don’t like sleeping alone, I really  _can’t_  any more. The only decent sleep I’ve had since tour began has been that night I crashed your hotel room, and the night we were on my bus.”

And there it is. The thing that they haven’t been talking about.

“What about last night?”

Blaine’s head snaps up and he stares at Kurt. “You know about that?”

“Mhmm.”

“Oh god,” Blaine moans, “I’m sorry. I know I’m a complete creep, I just—“

“Hey, no, you’re not a creep,” Kurt says, “not by a long shot. And if you need me to be your tour teddy bear, we can do that. I just want you to be okay, Blaine.”

“But it’s  _weird_.”

“Since when did we ever do normal?” Kurt asks, laughing despite himself. “I like our little acts of weirdness, it makes for a much more interesting friendship. If sharing a bed will help you get to sleep at night, then we can share a bed. No big deal.”

Blaine’s chin trembles, in that way it always does when he’s trying not to cry. He throws his arms around Kurt’s neck and hugs him tightly. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he mumbles into Kurt’s hair.

“Be a sleep-deprived zombie, evidently,” Kurt says. Blaine flicks one of his new piercings in retaliation, making Kurt hiss. They stay there for a while, locked in an embrace, until Kurt’s butt goes numb and he hoists Blaine up as he stands and dumps him on the bed. “So is it just me?” He asks, while Blaine stares dumbly up at him. “Or would sharing a bed with Sam or Tina or one of your hook-ups produce the same effect?”

“It seems to just be you,” Blaine confesses.

Kurt sucks in a breath through his teeth, wondering if they need to talk more, or whether this new line they’ve drawn is where they’re best to stop at. The last thing he wants is to lose Blaine all together by pushing too hard. Blaine seems to think the conversation is over, as he slips into the bed and holds a hand out to Kurt. “Come cuddle me,” he demands, and Kurt rolls his eyes.

“You’re so bossy when you’re tired,” he complains, flicking off the light and climbing into bed beside Blaine. He can clear up the mess on the floor in the morning.

They lie awkwardly side by side, unable to move in the tight squeeze that is the single bed. Blaine fidgets uncomfortably, shifting this way and that. Kurt thinks he knows what he needs, but he wants Blaine to ask. Just this once, he thinks, Blaine needs to ask.

“I need,” Blaine begins, voice tiny in the silence of the room that seems so much larger in the dark.

“Tell me.”

“I need you to hold me,” Blaine confesses. “Like, hard. I can’t, I don’t—“ His breathing picks up, and Kurt’s quick to turn onto his side and pull Blaine against him, get Blaine’s arms pinned to his chest in Kurt’s embrace.

“Shhh,” Kurt murmurs, “I know. I’ve got you.”

Blaine goes limp immediately, almost sobs in relief, and within moments he’s asleep. Kurt can hear the others laughing downstairs, but he blocks them out, focusing on the man lying with him. In sleep, Blaine looks peaceful, relaxed in a way he hasn’t been since tour started several months ago. Kurt’s resolutely not thinking about the many different ways they’ve redrawn the boundaries of their friendship since tour began. Not thinking about how sooner or later, all the little things they’re ignoring or filing away to be dealt with at another time are going to spill out of the closet and have to be faced. Of course, in fighting not to think about it, every atom of Kurt’s consciousness goes into overdrive panicking about it all.

Once the bubble that is tour life is finished, they’ll stop all the innocent touches, Kurt’s sure of it. There will be no more kisses, no more sleepy Blaine in his bed. Things will be how they were before.

Kurt doesn’t understand why that prospect leaves him with a pit in his stomach. 

Eventually, he lets himself be lulled into slumber by Blaine’s breathing.

Freaking out won’t change what’s coming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the support so far guys!


	3. Chapter 3

Sunday passes in a blur. For the first time since the night on Blaine’s bus, Kurt wakes to find Blaine still in his bed. Unlike the night on Blaine’s bus, Kurt isn’t rutting against his best friend’s ass. He considers that a bonus.

Brittany doesn’t mention Blaine sharing Kurt’s bed, and Sam doesn’t bring up Blaine’s absence from their bedroom. Kurt’s sure it’s because of how relaxed Blaine is all day. They don’t want to tease him for it. The shadows under Blaine’s eyes are already fading, courtesy of fourteen solid hours of uninterrupted sleep. He has a second helping at breakfast, and again at lunch. Kurt manages to pin Sam and Quinn down, and they agree to make sure Blaine eats once they’re back on tour.

Once again, Blaine’s breakdown has been fixed within just a few hours of someone realising something was wrong. Kurt only wishes the rest of the band were as easy to fix when things went awry. He’d spent more than a few nights sat up with Tina or Puck or Sam after an ugly break-up, or a row of bad days, supplying tissues and ice-cream and listening to them vent. Their mopes always lasted for days, weeks even sometimes. Kurt can’t complain too much. He knows his own sour moods are up there with the rest of them.

After dinner, everyone goes outside and watches the last of the evening light fade. Jake and Brittany spent the day making a bonfire, so once the night is truly begun, and the only light is coming from the full moon above the lake, they light it.

“All in for  _fuck marry kill_ unless named in the question,” Puck announces. He’s lying on a log, Quinn sat on his legs, passing a spliff lazily back and forth around the circle. “Johnny Depp, myself and Kurt.”

“Fuck Johnny,” everyone choruses, and then start giggling, because  _duh_.

“Marry Kurt,” Blaine says, and the others start nodding in agreement. Kurt positively glows.

Puck looks offended. “Nobody wants to marry me?”

“Aw, I’ll marry you, Puck,” Sam says, blowing him a kiss. “But only because if everyone else marries Kurt and I do too, that makes me married to them by default. It’s really marry you or the band, and in that case you’re the lesser of the two evils.”

“What’s Kurt got that I haven’t?” Puck insists, climbing out from under Quinn and sitting in Sam’s lap. Sam doesn’t bat an eyelid and snakes his hands up Puck’s shirt to warm them, grinning inanely at the rest of the band. This tour seems to have gone from mainly-straight-with-a-few-token-lgbt-members to everyone being some form of bicurious. It’s fantastic.

“Well one, you’re my brother, and two, Kurt has manners,” Jake suggests.

“And patience,” Mike adds. Everyone else starts throwing in their two cents.

“Better breath.”

“Nicer clothes.”

“More earning potential.”

“Flexibility.”

“Good kisser.”

The last one is Blaine’s, and earns a series of wolf whistles. Puck throws a hand to his chest, leaning his head back on Sam’s shoulder and proclaiming, “I am wounded!” to the heavens. Sam bites down on the junction between Puck’s neck and shoulder, sucking hard, so that by the time Puck dislodges him there’s an impressive hickey left behind.

“Now you’re wounded,” Kurt laughs, giving Sam a high-five.

The spliff reaches Jake, but he passes it on to Kurt without taking a hit. Catching the various surprised looks being sent his way— he’s never refused a hit before— he shrugs. “I’m calling Marley later, she hates it when I call her high.”

“You really like this one, huh?” Mike says.

Jake shrugs, suddenly very interested by the bonfire. The tips of his ears give him away though, turning a dark red. Kurt really likes Jake, he decides, as he watches him get buried under a barrage of a questions from the band about just how much he likes Marley.  It’s not like Kurt hadn’t liked him before, but Jake’s role in the family that is the band has always been that of the kid brother. Kurt’s never been that interested in having younger siblings. Watching Jake now though, as he tussles with Puck on the floor and shrieks as he gets tickle-tackled by Brittany and Tina, Kurt can see the appeal.

“You are thinking way too hard for someone who’s meant to be high,” Blaine says, voice low in Kurt’s ear. He’d been sitting with Mike the last time Kurt checked, but at some point must have nipped over to take Jake’s seat.

“I like thinking.”

“What’cha thinking about?”

“Family.”

Blaine’s eyes soften, and he tugs on Kurt’s arm until he gives in and crawls into Blaine’s lap. “You missing them?”

“Oh, no,” Kurt says, realising what Blaine must be thinking. “Or, yes, of course, but they’re not who I was thinking of. I meant this,” he waves a hand at the band, the bonfire. “Us. Our family.”

Blaine catches on fast and grins. “Who’s who in our family, then?”

“Well Jake’s the kid brother, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Blaine echoes. Brittany’s passing out sparklers—god knows where she got them from— and they each take one, lighting the ends from the match Mike offers them. Kurt watches her skip around the circle, eyes bright, tossing her hair back as she tugs at Tina’s scarves, nudges Quinn over so she can sit with her.

“Britt’s the baby,” he decides. “The little sister everyone teases and spoils. Quinn’s the grumpy teenage sister who’s too cool for it all, and Tina’s the kinder middle sister, who lets you muck about with her stuff but snaps if you push too hard. Sam…” Kurt pauses, waving his sparkler about aimlessly. “Sam’s like the cool cousin. The one that teaches you a new riff if you’ve had a bad day.”

“Mike’s the big brother, right?”

“Of course,” Kurt laughs. “The nicest big brother there ever could be. And Puck’s the crazy uncle you tell all your friends about, the one who lets you try beer and a cigarette while you’re staying for the summer.”

“What about you and me?” Blaine asks, tracing their initials with his sparkler. “Where are we in this big family?”

“You’re the parents,” Tina says, making them both jump. Kurt hadn’t realised the others were actually listening. “You mop us up when we’re upset, or encourage us to go for something we otherwise wouldn’t bother to.”

“And you both have dad voices if we’re late getting back to the bus,” Puck throws in.

“We do not! Noah, take it back.”

“Noah, take it back,” Puck mocks. “See? Nobody else calls me Noah, Daddy Kurt.”

“Oh shut up,” Kurt says, but he’s laughing, they all are.  

“Does that make me Mommy?” Blaine asks, hamming it up and making them all dissolve into another giggle fit. Kurt doesn’t think he and Blaine are the parents, not really. Everyone in the band takes a turn playing at Mom or Dad, but none of them fit the role full time. Blaine’s like a mix of Sam and Mike, the cousin you can’t wait to hang out with and the big brother your friends are envious of. And Kurt? Well he’s not really sure where he fits into this family. He doesn’t think it’s possible to accurately judge your own place within a group. He might ask Brittany later. She won’t laugh at the question.  

Blaine really is okay now.

Later, when everyone is well and truly buzzed, Kurt lets Blaine drag him up to dance around the bonfire, chanting nonsense. It’s a full moon, and Brittany insists they celebrate by singing for it, but none of them can think of any songs about the moon, just snippets. So they shriek those out, loud as they can because there’s nobody around to hear, and then they just call out random words and try and get them to rhyme as they spin and dance and laugh, linking arms as they race faster and faster around the bonfire. The flames look like they’re chasing them, licking higher up the wood as Puck throws more branches onto the fire, and Kurt feels like he’s floating as it crackles and spits, embers getting caught on the wind as it blows past, dancing with them.

It’s then, as the group blur together as they speed up, with Blaine clinging to his left hand and Jake to his right, that Kurt makes a vow to remember this night. To not lose it in the haze of the tour, but to keep it vivid, frame it in his mind and come back to it whenever he feels low.

This is his home. Here, surrounded by his friends, warmth spreading from his stomach to his fingertips and igniting every nerve along the way. In a place he can say what he wants without having to worry, where a good night out means having Jake sat on his shoulders as Sam and Tina use their phones as flashlights to lead them all back to the buses.

This is where he belongs.

* * *

 

By the time the fire is burnt out and everyone is starting to sober up, it’s almost dawn. Gradually people drift off to bed, Blaine included, but Kurt’s not sleepy yet. He goes upstairs with Blaine and cuddles under the covers with him, smoothing out his curls and running his hands along Blaine’s spine until he falls asleep. Kurt gives him another ten minutes, making sure that Blaine is actually asleep—and hoping that he might fall asleep himself, if he’s being honest—before he gives in and climbs back out of bed.

Tina’s set up a keyboard in the main room, her headphones still plugged in from when she was playing earlier while the rest of the group watched a few episodes of Brittany’s new favorite anime, Ouran High School Host Club.

Kurt sits down at it, leaving the lights off apart from a candle he balances on the table nearby. There’s a lamp he could use, probably should because if he spills wax on her keyboard, Tina will actually skin him (and Kurt really doesn’t want to be a skinsuit at their next show, thank you very much), but he likes the aura the candle gives off.

He used to be a musical theatre major, okay, he likes the dramatics.

Kurt loses his shirt, because the material is really irritating his piercings and he’s beginning to worry his nipples are actually going to fall off if anyone so much as looks at them. He peers at himself in the mirror above the fireplace, prods at the puffy skin and pulls a face. They look good though, if you can look past the red irritated swelling; shiny metal bars that glint in the candle light. As soon as they’re healed enough for him to start playing with them, Kurt’s pretty sure they’re going to replace his tongue as his new favorite piercings.

Sitting down at the keyboard, he swaps Tina’s headphones for his own.

There are lines, see. All of them have little quirks, things they don’t like to be messed around with. Kurt doesn’t like people going through his clothes, Puck hates people touching his cymbals and Tina? She doesn’t like it when anyone uses her headphones. Her keyboard is fine, they can go nuts as long as they don’t mess with any of her pre-sets, but the second anyone tries to borrow her headphones she freezes up. They’re kind of her thing, always around her neck when she’s on stage even though they aren’t plugged into anything, completing every outfit.  

Kurt can respect that.

He plays around with the keys, not really attempting a tune. He’d had lessons when he was a kid, but he hadn’t paid much attention and not long after he’d started, his Dad had relented and let him drop out and go to ballet classes instead. Tina had tried to teach him once or twice, during their early rehearsals, but they’d both lost interest and never picked the lessons back up once tour started. It wasn’t like either of them had the time anyway.

One thing Kurt does know how to play, after god knows how many vocal coaching sessions and the time he spent in Glee club back in high school, is a scale.

He runs his fingers along the keys, sings each note. He doubts anything less than an earthquake would wake the cabin up, probably not even that, but he’s quiet regardless. Over the years, as dancing took up more of his time, Kurt stopped singing. He still sings along to the radio in the car, or in the shower sometimes, but the wind or water whip the words away as quickly as they come, so he’s never worried about staying on key. Now though, Kurt’s more mindful, and a pleasant tingling spreads through his fingers as he realises that despite not having sung with any serious effort in years, he still can hold a tune. Not as well as he used to, if Kurt wanted to attempt some of the songs at the higher end of his range he’d have to spend some time coming up to scratch, but for the everyday songs he thinks he’ll be fine.

It’s with a rush that Kurt’s come to associate with pouring off stage with the rest of the band that he realises he actually wants to sing again, like he used to. When he’s back in New York, he decides, he’ll look for a new vocal coach. Just for fun of course, he has no intention of trying to break into the music industry after all these years, but hey, everyone needs a hobby. It’ll be a nice way to pass the time until the next tour.

Kurt fetches his iPod from his coat pocket and swaps his headphones out from the keyboard, sitting on the rug by the fireplace and flicking through to the instrumental versions he has of Blaine’s songs. He hits play on  _Frostbitten_ and just listens the first time through, even though he knows this song—all of the songs—better than he does anything else. The second time he hums softly, letting his voice rise and fall like Blaine’s does when he’s on stage. The third time, Kurt sings.

He doesn’t have Blaine’s finesse, can’t do the same smoky purr that makes everyone in a thousand foot radius want to drop to their knees, so he doesn’t try to emulate the way Blaine sings it. He does it his way, letting the words drip off his tongue, curl at the backs of his teeth.

Kurt’s so wrapped up in it all that he misses the pad of bare feet coming down the stairs, doesn’t realise he has an audience until the song ends and he can hear light clapping. When he opens his eyes, he’s met with a length of pyjama-ed leg. Looking down, there are two reasonably sized feet poking out from the cuffs that are rolled up around the ankles, toe nails painted black with little red bows on each big toe.

Kurt looks up very, very slowly. Blaine looms over him, eyes wide as he continues to clap, before he drops to his knees in front of him and smiles.

“You’re fantastic,” he gushes, “I can’t believe I didn’t know! Do the others?”

“Do the others what?” Kurt asks, putting his headphones down and wrapping his arms around his knees, pulling them up so he can rest his chin on them.

“Know you can sing like that!”

Kurt runs his fingers along the grain of the rug, and then goes back the other way. “Britt does, we were in Glee club together way back in high school. I used to sing in our rehearsals during college too.”

“But not Tina or Q or the rest?”

“Doubt it,” Kurt mumbles into his kneecaps. He’s pleased with the praise, but as much as his ego likes the boost, he doesn’t want to hear it. Not from Blaine. Not from anyone at all, not now. He’d been singing for himself, if he’d thought for even a second that the others might wake up he’d never have started. He’s being weird about it, he knows he is, and even he doesn’t really know  _why_ it’s bothering him so much. It just is.

Blaine flicks Kurt’s ear, still grinning broadly, oblivious to Kurt’s inner turmoil. “Come sing with me,” he demands, grabbing a pair of earbuds—Mike’s, maybe—off the coffee table and plugging them into the keyboard. He holds one out to Kurt, eyes big and pleading.

Kurt’s never been able to say no to that face.

Blaine waits until Kurt’s sat down on the stool behind the keyboard, and then he sits down on his lap, hooking his ankles around Kurt’s to help hold himself steady. “Sing  _Frostbitten_ again,” he says, and doesn’t wait for a reply before launching into the opening notes.

Kurt feels silly, self-conscious in a way that he hasn’t since he was a teenager, but as the song goes on he grows more confident, lets the music playing in one ear, and Blaine’s own voice singing into his other, sweep the nerves away. 

They sound good together. When the song finishes Blaine says as much, practically tripping over his words as he rushes to give Kurt compliments, before he starts burbling on about the song and the show.

“It sounds like you’re him,” Blaine babbles, “the guy being serenaded, like you’re singing back to me—well the guy who’s singing which is me but not me, like a character y’know—in a kind of mockery, the way you’re using your voice. We could do it in the show, make it like a duet, swap verses out—“

“Blaine, you’re rambling,” Kurt says, “and you’re wasting your time. I’m not singing in the show.”

“But—“

“No, Blaine.”

Kurt’s voice is a razor, slicing through the warm throat of the atmosphere they’d created and letting it all bleed out. Blaine’s gone rigid in Kurt’s lap, and he makes his hands into tight fists where they’re resting atop his own thighs, like he’s trying to keep from losing his temper. But then he goes lax, and turns his head so he can smile weakly at Kurt. “Sorry, I got carried away. Sorry,” he says again.

Kurt almost wishes Blaine would get mad, even though there’s nothing to get mad at. It’s completely within Kurt’s right to refuse to sing on stage, and Blaine knows it. Kurt still wishes he would snap at him though, or get upset, or anything at all really. Anything but look so disappointed, like Kurt’s snatched away his brand new toy on Christmas morning and thrown it out with the wrapping paper.

He takes Blaine’s hands instead, gently easing them out of their fists and putting them back on the keyboard. “I won’t sing on stage,” he says, “but I’ll sing with you here. Play something else?”

They cycle through more of Blaine’s songs, some of the hits on the radio that they both know and Blaine can play, and then they get started on their favorite musicals. It’s there that Kurt learns Blaine has two voices.

There’s the one Kurt’s used to, the sexy rough rumble that makes people swoon, but when Blaine starts singing  _As Long As You’re Mine,_ Kurt gets his first glimpse of Blaine’s “Broadway voice”. There’s no sex, no purr, just a strong, powerful voice that makes you stop and listen in a very similar, yet impossibly different, way to how Blaine normally sings.

It’s the kind of voice Kurt thinks eighteen year old Blaine must have used, when he was all bowties and too much hair gel. He wonders when Blaine discovered his other voice, the one that’s made him  _Blaine Anderson_ , as opposed to just sweet, dorky Blaine. He wonders if Blaine ever tried to make a go of Broadway, before education, and later the whole rock star thing, took him in another direction.

He could ask, but he doesn’t.

Sometimes it’s nice to know that there are still things that you don’t know about someone you care about.

 

* * *

 

They go up to bed at ten in the morning. The rest of the band are still asleep, but they’re returning to the buses tonight and Kurt and Blaine decide to shower instead of going back to bed. No point spending their last day in snooze land, Blaine reasons, and Kurt’s happy to agree.

When the others finally trudge downstairs, wiping sleep from their eyes and yawning, Kurt and Blaine have packed up the buses that arrived at noon. Brittany is getting a piggyback from Mike, but once she finds out the drivers are back she scrambles off and rushes up to them. They’re her all-time favorite people outside of the band, as they both have toddlers at home and can handle her sudden bursts of childishness. At least, that’s Tina’s reasoning behind it. Kurt thinks she’s just hoping to sweet-talk one of them into letting her drive the bus.

“Still want that haircut?” Mike asks, leaning over the back of the sofa that Kurt is sprawled out on, embroidering one of the shirts he’d managed to finish sewing.

“Sure, two ticks,” Kurt replies, putting away his things and taking them out to the bus, before finding Mike in the kitchen.

They emerge thirty minutes later to a round of applause.

Kurt didn’t go back to his usual style. He’d had Mike cut most of it short again, but left a dramatic sweep of long bangs that just brushed the corner of his mouth before feathering shorter into the rest of his hair.

It  _wasn’t_ because he liked how much the rest of the band, and Blaine in particular was guilty of this, played with his hair when it was longer. He’d had the same haircut since he was seventeen, ten years was more than enough time for a change, he insisted when they all asked.

That was his same excuse when his dad called after Mike snapped a photo for Instagram.

“Pull the other one,” Burt says. “That might wash with your friends, kiddo, but it isn’t going to work with me. You hate having your hair long. If there was one thing I could count on when you were growing up, it was you complaining within two weeks of a haircut that it was starting to get long again and needed cutting.”

“That was years ago!”

Kurt’s saved from one of Burt’s unimpressed silence by Brittany swiping the phone. “Hi Mr Hummel! Are you coming to any of the shows? If you come to one of the ones in Canada you can see our buses and meet our drivers! Maxie’s the driver of the bus we’re on and he likes the same hats as you do! I like Maxie a lot, but he won’t let us drive the bus, which is  _so_  unfair because I’m a really good driver and I bet I could get us to Canada twice as fast as he could. We have two buses, did you know that? Well  _actually_ there’s three, because Blaine’s tour manager and all the people who don’t actually go on stage use that one, but we don’t see them very much when we’re on the buses because they sometimes leave a long time before we do to go to the next city because they don’t like the same clubs we do. They’re a bit older than we are, though, so I think they’re just sleeping, but Blaine says they actually do lots of important things that I haven’t noticed but I  _still_ think they’re just sleeping. Old people sleep a lot. Not that they’re super old, but they’re definitely not as fun as everyone else.

“ _Or_  you could come to one of the European shows, or come to Australia! Puck says there are dropbears in Australia but I  _think_ he’s just trying to scare me—“

Kurt leaves her to it. His dad will call back later if he still has anything to say, and there’s no stopping Brittany once she gets started.

“Hey!” Blaine springs out from behind a corner and catches hold of Kurt’s arm, beaming. “How’s Burt?”

“He was fine, although I’ve left Britt talking his ear off—“

“Poor guy,” Blaine says with feeling, “if Britt’s not back in the next ten minutes we’ll have to go back and save him.”

“He has years of dealing with her, he’ll be fine,” Kurt says. “Did you want something?”

“Mm? Oh, yes! Okay so I called Daniel, and apparently they’re already across the border setting up. He wanted to check the hotel arrangements for Europe, so I’m just going to run through them with the rest of the band. I know we’ve all just bunked down in a twin or single depending on who got to the hotel first for this leg of the tour, but we’ve got a lot more time sleeping in hotels than on buses once we get to Europe. We’re all going to have to share. I’ve got everyone gathered outside.” He pauses, looking back towards Kurt’s bedroom. “Should I get Britt?”

“As long as there’s a bed, Britt won’t care who she’s sleeping with,” Kurt says. “If she has a real problem we can always swap out once we get there, can’t we? Europe’s still four weeks away.”

“True,” Blaine says. “Come on then.”

It takes a fair amount of negotiating, and almost comes down to another game of pick-a-stick, but eventually the room-shares are allocated. It’s ridiculous, everyone’s going to end up swapping depending on whether there’s been a falling out, or if the dancers decide to share to choreograph something different, or for any number of other reasons. Still, they have a list Blaine can email to Daniel.

The tour always runs a lot smoother when Daniel’s happy.

Kurt’s sharing with Blaine, obviously, and there are a few cities that they’ve put down to share with Sam as well when there’s been another room of three needed. Whenever possible, Quinn, Tina, and Brittany are going to share, at Quinn and Tina’s insistence that they need time with girls to balance out the testosterone overload that comes with the buses. If there’s no three rooms, Tina and Sam are sharing. It was the rest of the guys who were being indecisive, as neither Mike nor Jake wanted to share with Puck’s snoring as bad as it was. Eventually Sam made the sacrifice, offering to share with Puck on the nights the girls were in a three and Kurt and Blaine in a twin so he was roomless, and for the rest of the time Puck would have to have a single.

He was more than happy with this arrangement, as it meant he could bring girls back to the hotel and—

Well Kurt never found out what he was going to do to the poor girls, because Sam and Tina had both slammed a hand over Puck’s mouth and warned him to watch what he said next.

“I love your dad, Kitten Cat,” Brittany says as she skips out of the cabin, interrupting the weird fingers-jabbing-in-awkward-places fight Sam and Puck were having. She gives Kurt back his phone. “He’s going to come see us when we’re in Italy!”

“Yeah, right,” Kurt chuckles. “My dad doesn’t like the kind of music Blaine does, Britt.”

“He promised! Carole’s always wanted to go to Italy so he’s taking her as an anniversary present, and the same time they’re going to be there is when we’re touring so he said he’ll come!”

“Oh god,” Blaine says, eyes wide. “I don’t want your Dad to hate me!”

“He doesn’t hate you,” Kurt says automatically. “Why would he? You’ve an open invitation for Thanksgiving every year now.”

“He’s never seen a show! He doesn’t know what we do up there! I still remember you telling me about the  _you matter_  talk.”

“You had to bring that up,” Kurt groans. “It’ll be fine. He’s probably not actually coming to a show, we’ll just have lunch or something when we’re all in the same area, that’s all. I told you, he doesn’t like this sort of music. Or dancing, actually.”

Brittany’s been tussling with Sam and Puck, her sharp fingernails far more effective at jabbing than their blunt ones, but she looks up at that. “He promised,” she says, as if that’s the end of it. “And he said dropbears aren’t real so ha!” Britt adds, glaring at Puck before thrusting a finger into the soft flesh above both his and Sam’s hips until they both give up and declare her the winner.

“Give over Britt, that  _hurts_ ,” Sam whines when she doesn’t let them up straight away. “Blaine make her stop!”

Blaine’s halfway to the cabin, and he turns to them with a raised eyebrow. “Why are you asking me? Kurt’s the one who’s got the most control over her.”

“She’s not a dog!” Kurt says. “Besides, you two started it.” When they just continue to stare at him, Puck and Sam pleading, Brittany triumphant, Kurt relents. He’s been on the receiving end of Brittany’s play-fighting before, and knows first-hand how painful it can get if she isn’t cut off when things start getting carried away. “Britt, let them up. We need to eat and then get going, otherwise we’ll miss our first show. I thought you were looking forward to seeing Canada for the first time?”

“I am!” Brittany climbs off of the men with a yawn. “And you say manicures are for girls,” she tuts at them, waggling her devil fingers before going into the cabin in search of food.

Quinn catches Kurt’s frown and sighs. “I’ll have another talk with her about getting too rough with the guys.”

“That’s all I ask.”

 

* * *

 

When the band board the buses ready for the journey north, Blaine joins the main bus. They break out Cards against Humanity once more, but after a few rounds Kurt distributes his white cards amongst the rest of them and goes to his bunk instead. He wants to finish getting the shirts sewed before the Canada tour starts, otherwise he’ll be on stage shirtless or in the mesh shirt he wore the second time Blaine kissed him.

He’s just finished the final shirt, and started on decorating the masks, when Blaine’s head pops up beside him. Kurt jumps, dropping the needle as he does so. “Christ, Blaine!” He yelps, patting his chest. “I think you’re intent on giving me a heart attack, all this jumping out when I don’t expect it.”

Blaine says something, but Kurt can’t hear him over the music roaring in his ears. He tugs out his earbuds. “What?”

“I said that I did call your name. You just couldn’t hear me over all this racket.”

“It’s not racket,” Kurt protests, lighting his iPod screen back up to show Blaine the album. “It’s the music my brother liked.”

“Yeah? Budge up, let me listen too,” Blaine says, elbowing Kurt and then trying to pull himself onto the bunk. Kurt helps him get up, and they spend a few minutes trying to arrange themselves so they can both have room to breathe. The fact is, the bunks weren’t built for two people. Hell, Kurt doesn’t think they were built for one. In the end, they lean back against the side of the bus, slumped right down to avoid the ceiling with their legs dangling off the edge of bunk, Kurt’s sewing in his lap and the iPod between them.

“This isn’t your iPod,” Blaine realises, “it’s the wrong model.”

“Good eye. No, this one was Finn’s. Carole let me have it after… Well, after.”

“But he died, what, seven years ago?” Blaine says. “This thing still works after all this time?”

Kurt shrugs. “I don’t listen to it often, so I guess that’s helped it last.”

“What made you want to today?”

“I just missed him,” Kurt says quietly, going back to stitching feathers onto the corners of the mask. Blaine squeezes Kurt’s hand, and they get an hour of silence, just listening to the music, Blaine occasionally passing Kurt a handful of beads or a ribbon, before the band come to bed.

“You switching buses?” Mike asks as he hoists himself onto the bunk opposite Kurt, one arm thrown up to help protect his head from the roof.

“Haven’t got time,” Blaine says, handing Kurt back his earbud and glancing towards the back of the bus. “I’ll crash on the sofa.”

“You can sleep here. We’ll just be a bit squashed, that’s all.” Kurt packs his sewing back in his bag and flings it into one of the cupboards. The rest of the band end up watching with much amusement as the men arrange themselves on the bunk, cursing loudly whenever an elbow or knee connect with a chest or groin. Brittany, who’s always been the best at Tetris, ends up ordering them into position.

“Blaine, left foot between Kurt’s right and the back wall. Kurt, right shoulder under Blaine’s head.”

“This is like the most messed up version of Twister ever,” Kurt grumbles, but eventually they’re both lying down on the bunk. It’s not comfortable, and if either of them need to pee in the night they’ll never get off the bunk without Brittany to direct them, but they’re in a feasible sleeping position.

Somehow, they do sleep. They must do, because Kurt jolts awake to Mike throwing a pillow at them both. “Getcha passport,” he yawns, “we have to go prove our identities to border control.”

“I bet the Queen of England doesn’t have this problem,” Blaine mumbles into Kurt’s shoulder, snuggling up to him. Kurt’s pretty sure he’s not actually awake, just talking in his sleep in response to stimulus. “She just flicks a penny and there’s her face. No arguing.”

“So you want to be the Queen of England?”

“No. I just think it’d be nice sometimes. I’d be a good queen. I like corgis.”

Blaine wakes up properly just in time to see Kurt roll off the bed in his blanket burrito, giggling away and and mouthing “corgis” as he goes.


End file.
